XXXVI
VARIOUS OPINIONS
Letters from Alphonse Daudet, Paul Heyse, the Bishop of Durham, Ruggero Bonghi, and Count Kamarofski
After our return from Berlin we gave ourselves up once again to our literary and propagandist labors. We exerted ourselves to find out what distinguished contemporaries thought of our purposes, and to utilize their approval if we got it. So it was that I gained the authoritative approval of Björnson and Fulda and Edmondo de Amicis and Émile Zola and many others. But we also encountered opposition and doubt, though only rarely. My husband, who during our stay in Paris had won Alphonse Daudet’s sympathies, now wrote to him about the founding of the Peace Society and about the Congress in Rome, and asked him if he would help in the cause. Here is the answer:
My dear Colleague,
War is odious and your work is fine. So I am with you against war; but do you really believe that we can do anything in behalf of peace except wave our arms and utter sounds? To me war is a thing fated, and the apple side of my nature—mankind is divided into pears and apples, idealists and others—the terrible apple side of me, then, takes from me all hope of success in the campaign which I am ready to undertake with you.
Remember me to Madame Suttner, and believe me wholly
Yours, Alphonse Daudet
And to me a famous German poet wrote:
Honored Baroness:
Is there need of an express assurance of my warmest approbation of the ends and aims of the Peace League? And yet, as I am convinced that mankind, ruled as they are more by passions and instincts than by reason and love, will approach these ends only by the civilizing labors of centuries if they ever do at all, it goes against my grain to express in solemn protests, from which I am unable to hope for any practical result, pious wishes which for a nobler humane minority are self-evident. As long as European civilization is still threatened by a half-Asiatic barbarism which will never submit to an arbitrator’s decision but will yield only to force, I regard the Ceterum censeo of such congresses even as a danger, like everything else by which our readiness for defense, indispensable in the interest of the world’s peace, is impaired.
With sincere respect
Yours very devotedly
Paul Heyse
Munich, October 31, 1891
I append a few other letters from that time:
Auckland Castle Bishop Auckland
July 12, 1892
Dear Madam:[39]
Englishmen cannot but hail with the fullest, heartiest sympathy the work which you have taken in hand, as well as the success that has attended it. The promotion of the business of peace in the nearest future depends in large measure on the mood of the German race, and on this you have already made a deep impression.
As far as I am personally concerned, I have faith enough—may I say, I have confidence enough in the power of the Christian faith?—to expect that if once the magnanimity of opposing nations is awakened, which is quite within the range of possibility, there will also be found a way to obviate the persistent causes of mutual irritation. Then the natural institutions of peace will suffice to furnish the nations with that powerful discipline, consisting in self-denial, which at present has to be maintained by perpetual readiness for war.
Would it be going too far to express the hope that even our generation may yet live to see France, Germany, Russia, fenced in as it were by a neutral girdle, enabled to improve their resources without being obliged to anticipate untoward events, and to perform their functions in the service of man—at the same time forwarding the kingdom of God on earth.
May a rich blessing attend your efforts!
With the sincerest feelings of respect, dear Madam, I am
Yours truly
B. F. Dunelm.[40]
I had kept up a correspondence with the chairman of the Congress at Rome, Minister Ruggero Bonghi. Here is one of his letters (the original in Italian):
Anagni, July 9, 1892
Dear Friend:
Since you permit me to call you “friend,” I will no longer give you any other name, for there is none tenderer. And the consciousness that I am speaking to a friend sweetens writing for me, makes it almost seem pleasanter to me than wandering about the fields to breathe in the fresh breezes which blow here on the heights of the Apennines in these early morning hours—here where I now, as Petrarch says, “dwell serious and sad” (doglioso e grave or seggio), and where in days gone by so much martial rage was let loose, while to-day such deep peace and quiet reign. Here in this ancient Anagni whose origin is lost in gray antiquity, which took the highest place in a people that had been subjected by Rome, and which was once the home of haughty popes who from their dwelling-place there ruled the world—here, I say, I indulge in considerations about the fortunes of my country, about the difficult remedies for its ailments; and withal, in my orphanage I watch the little girls grow up. And I instruct them so that when they have grown big, and return to their families, they may have an influence upon them to make them better and may turn the future into a more friendly channel....
It almost seems to me, dear friend, that I am thus doing a work perhaps more useful—though it may be insignificant—than the work of very many who carry their chatter into the assemblies, and their passions and infatuations into the privy council. And when I think of you I rise to that ideal of unity and peace which lives in your spirit and your heart, and which bears witness to nobility of soul in those who can grasp it and love it,—while despising it, deriding it, and denying it, attests the opposite.
What has war accomplished here? It has laid waste these landscapes, and often in the course of the centuries scattered the inhabitants so that even the traces of their habitations have disappeared. Often, also, in the course of the centuries, Anagni and the Secco valley above which it lies have risen; and as often it has been again reduced by the power of arms and the ambition of the great. And now the valley is unhealthy; one can scarcely get safety from its miasmas up here, about five hundred meters above the level of the sea.
I have an idea, and I am almost afraid to express it, my dear lady. It is this: I believe that Rome, by which the first conquest of these territories was effected, also brought the first misfortune upon them. Either the whole history of the first centuries of Rome is false, or else the peoples which first fell under the Roman yoke were previously happier and more numerous and lived on healthier and more fruitful lands and in more widely spread residences than after that. What benefit has war realized here or anywhere else?
If in the deeds to which it constrains men not all is evil, and if many a virtue shines out in connection with them, this is because man, savage and—I feel like saying—bestial as he may become, still never wholly ceases to be human, and in some way mitigates the harm which his own work inflicts. If war has done anything good in any respect, this has been done, one may say, in its own despite and contrary to its intent. Even if many instincts impel man to war, how much nobler are those that repel him from it! How august sounds the voice that would restrain him from it, in comparison to the angry shout that eggs it on! To-day I read the maxim of old Lao-Tse: “If two armies of equal strength are pitted against each other, the victory belongs to that one whose leader was the more merciful.”
That is—unfortunately—not correct. But it is one of those human illusions that are more valuable than a truth, because they prove that man feels ruth at the use of arms, that his conscience is not easy even when he is compelled to use them, and that he seeks the basis for victory in some virtue, in some feeling that might absolve him. We promoters of peace, who work for it with glowing zeal, have in the last analysis no other object than this,—that man shall become wholly human.
And, as I am in the habit of ultimately ending my letters to my friends, I make an end of this one. Have a little affection for your
Bonghi
After my trip to Berlin I received from Bonghi the following lines, this time written in French:
Rome, April 26, 1892
I follow you and applaud you. You have everything that is necessary for the beneficent and intelligent part that you are playing. You have had the courage to go and plant our banner in Berlin, in the very fortress of our enemies.
Write me, dear Baroness, as often as you can; you will be doing me a very great favor. A thousand greetings to your husband.
Yours altogether
R. Bonghi
From the famous Russian folklorist and professor in Moscow University, Count Kamarofski, I had received an article for my review and the following letter:
Moscow, May 18/30, 1892
Highly honored Lady:
Accept my thanks for your letter and the pamphlets accompanying it. You are right: you are no stranger to me since I have learned to esteem you from your beautiful story, Die Waffen nieder. I am sending you herewith my lecture which I delivered in behalf of the famine-stricken, and give you permission to make such extracts from it as you may see fit. As for an original article for your review, I will get one ready as soon as I find the opportunity.
In Russia people defend the tremendous military preparations as necessary on account of the Triple Alliance, and especially of Germany; thus every one talks of his merely defensive designs, and attributes to his neighbor the most threatening plans. Surely a melancholy sign of the times!
In view of this, all friends of peace are called upon to act on public opinion, and through it on the governments, as much as possible; and certainly the chief part in this noble effort belongs to women, for they are most able to influence education and morals.
I am yours, etc.
Graf L. Kamarowsky