XXV
DIE WAFFEN NIEDER
How the plan for the book originated · Study of sources · The model of my hero · Satisfaction in writing the word “End” · Unanimously rejected by the editors · The publisher’s scruples · Publication · How the book was received · Favorable and hostile criticisms · Personal contact with the peace movement resulting from the novel · The peace congress of 1889 in Paris · Founding of Interparliamentary Union
But I no longer had “The Age of Machinery” and its fate so much at heart. I had on the stocks another work, which had taken possession of me; to this all my thoughts and purposes were turned. I wanted to be of service to the Peace League, and how could I better do so than by trying to write a book which should propagate its ideas? And I could do it most effectively, I thought, in the form of a story. I should certainly find a larger public for that than for a treatise. In treatises one can only lay down abstract appeals to the reason, can philosophize, argue, and dissertate; but I wanted something else: I wanted to be able to put into my book not only what I thought but what I felt, felt passionately; I wanted to give expression to the pain which the image of war burned into my soul; I wanted to present life, palpitating life, reality, historical reality; and all this could be done only in a novel, and best in a novel written in the form of an autobiography. And so I went ahead and wrote Die Waffen nieder, “Away with Weapons.”[20]
It was to be the history of a young woman whose fate was closely involved with the wars fought in our own day. But in order that the historical events introduced should correspond to the reality, that the descriptions of the battle scenes should be truthful, it was requisite for me to make preliminary studies and collect material and documents.
This I did conscientiously, as well as I could. I read up in big-volumed histories, I rummaged in old newspapers and archives, to find reports of war correspondents and military surgeons; I got such acquaintances of mine as had been in the field to relate episodes of battles; and during this period of study my horror of war waxed to the most agonizing intensity. I can certify that the sufferings through which I led my heroine were actually experienced by me while I was working on it. What a woman must suffer when she knows that a beloved husband is engaged in war I could now more easily imagine, for the depth of my own conjugal love sufficed to put me mentally in such a situation. And the portrayal of a noble personality, as I attempted it in drawing the figure of my hero, was rendered the easier by the fact that my own husband sat as model for this character.
What a feeling of relief and satisfaction when I wrote the word “End” at the bottom of the second volume!
Now for placing it. I had no fears about this; many periodicals had begged me to send them a manuscript, and that great weekly which had printed my earlier works, and which had never refused anything I sent, would doubtless publish this manuscript too. I sent it in without misgivings. My astonishment was not little when the reply came:
Gracious Lady:
It is with regret that we find ourselves compelled to return to you the ... [some compliments] manuscript. Large classes of our readers would take offense at what it contains.
So I tried it on another editor: the same result. And then on others—unanimously rejected. In one of the answers (which were all more or less sugar-coated with courteous phrases) it said: “In spite of all these merits, however, it is quite out of the question to publish the novel in a military country.”
So perhaps it was better to forego the thought of serial publication and let Die Waffen nieder make its first appearance in book form; and so I sent the much-traveled package to my publisher Pierson. He hesitated a long time. The book seemed to him dangerous. At that time there had just been decided in Germany a case under the press laws, of which the consequence was to be an increase in the strictness of the censorship and a rigorous suppression of all writings that contained any sort of mutinousness against existing institutions. Pierson advised that I should give the manuscript to some experienced statesman to look over, and ask him to strike out everything that could give offense. I cried out in indignation at such a demand. A work in which I had written off from my soul all the rage and all the pain that the hallowed “existing institution” of war had begotten in me (and assuredly in thousands of others beside me, only that they dared not express it)—to get somebody to lop and trim in diplomatic-opportunist fashion such a work, which, whatever its worth or worthlessness, had at least the one merit of being hotly felt and unreservedly sincere,—to remodel it by the rules of that most contemptible of all arts, the art of suiting everybody,—no, sooner into the stove with it. Then I should alter the title at least, was the publisher’s next suggestion. No! The title embraces in three words the whole aim of the book. Of the title, too, not a syllable is to be changed. After this ultimatum Pierson gave way, and Die Waffen nieder made its appearance.
The publisher had no cause to regret his audacity: to-day the novel is circulated by hundreds of thousands and has been translated into a dozen languages. From this quite unexpected success I draw only one conclusion: the idea which permeates the book was to the taste of the public. In spite of the editors’ fears that the warlike German public would take no interest in the idea of peace, it was shown that this idea is cherished in wide circles—even in military circles; for from these too there came to me many tokens of appreciation. When a musical note sounds strongly in a room, this does not demonstrate so much the fullness of the tone as the favorable acoustic properties of the room. The spirit that usually obtains in newspaper offices, in theatrical directorates (as a generality, in managements of all sorts), is usually behind the times with regard to the wants of those masses who are in each case concerned: judgments are formed there according to the state of public opinion as it made itself felt ten or twenty years ago; but meanwhile public opinion itself, in its uninterrupted transformation, has progressed to another stage.
So I am ready to believe that a book against war, appearing at the beginning of the seventies, when the intoxication of victory still effervesced in Germany and the wrathful clamor for revenge still raged in France, would have had no success whatever. The cult of arms, too, had to attain those huge dimensions whereby it has since then harnessed the peoples under its heavy yoke, it had to have brought the world to the brink of ruin, in order that the watchword “Away with Weapons” might find so powerful an echo.
Every day brought me reviews from far and near,—feuilletons and editorials. Bartholomäus Carneri published a ten-column article in the Neue Freie Presse, J. V. Widmann a series of five feuilletons in the Bund. I received criticisms from Russia, where the book appeared in five different translations,—one of them authorized by me,—criticisms from America, from England, from the Scandinavian countries, where even in its first year translations were made.
I was now brought into living touch with all those who were connected with the peace movement, or who, having had their attention drawn to the existence of such a movement by my book, were now joining it.
The following letter afforded me especial pleasure, The inventor of dynamite wrote me:
Dear Baroness and Friend:
I have just finished reading your admirable masterpiece. We are told that there are two thousand languages—1999 too many—but certainly there is not one in which your delightful work should not be translated, read, and studied.
How long did it take you to write this marvel? You shall tell me when next I have the honor and happiness of pressing your hand—that amazonian hand which so valiantly makes war on war.
Nevertheless you make a mistake to cry “Away with Weapons,” because you yourself make use of them, and because yours—the charm of your style and the grandeur of your ideas—carry and will carry much farther than the Lébels, the Nordenfelts, the De Banges, and all the other implements of hell.[21]
A. Nobel
In a Reichsrat debate on the military budget (April 18, 1891) Minister Dunajewski, of the Department of Finance, spoke the following words:
“There has recently appeared a book called Die Waffen nieder. I can only advise the gentlemen to devote a few hours to the reading of this novel; any one who then still has a predilection for war I can only pity.”
Of course opponents were not lacking. Anonymous letters of ridicule and of abuse; withering criticisms—“What the good old lady tells about her misfortunes is indeed very sad; but the conclusions drawn from them can elicit from the serious politician only a smile”; “emotional silliness”; “obtrusive, inartistic didacticism”; “Brummagem that totally fails of its purpose”; “the authoress ought to return to her short stories, in which she has shown a quite clever talent”; etc. Even one of the great in the realm of literature, Felix Dahn, sent out an epigram which went the rounds of the press, but which—the poet himself will concede this—cannot boast of much poetic beauty:
An die weiblichen und männlichen Waffenscheuen
Die Waffen hoch! Das Schwert ist Mannes eigen,
Wo Männer fechten, hat das Weib zu schweigen,
Doch freilich, Männer gibt’s in diesen Tagen,
Die sollten lieber Unterröcke tragen.[22]
Everything in this world is in reciprocity. What comes as a result is in turn the cause of new results. So here. I had written the book with the design of rendering, in my own way, a service to the peace movement, of whose incipient organization I had learned; and the relationships and experiences that grew out of the book have swept me more and more into the movement, so that at last I was compelled to go into it not only, as I had at first intended, with my pen, but with my whole being.
Meanwhile, during the time of the World’s Exposition of 1889 in Paris, a Peace Congress had been held there, presided over by Jules Simon. This was taken as an opportunity for creating also the institution of Interparliamentary Conferences. The year before, two men—Randal Cremer, member of the English Parliament, and the French deputy Frédéric Passy—had set to work to form an Interparliamentary Union. They enlisted the support of a number of their colleagues, and in the year of the Exposition these assembled in a first conference (of the English Parliament three hundred members were present), and it was agreed that adherents should be secured from the popular assemblies of all the European countries, and that every year an Interparliamentary Conference should be held. For the next conference, the second, London was named as the place of meeting.
To all this the contemporary world paid but little attention, one might say paid none at all. But I followed these events with the eagerest and most hopeful interest. Through the monthly periodical Concord, the organ of the London Peace Association, I was kept informed of what was going on, and I read attentively the reports of all the speeches delivered in the assemblies, and of the resolutions passed. But as yet the idea of taking part in the movement myself, otherwise than with my pen, never entered my mind.