XLV
PEACE CONGRESS IN ANTWERP AND INTERPARLIAMENTARY CONFERENCE AT THE HAGUE
Preparation for the Congress by the Belgian government · Houzeau de Lehaye · A reminiscence of the battlefield of Sedan · Concerning free trade · Audience with King Leopold · Invitation to the Interparliamentary Conference · Reception the evening before · Pithy sentences from Rahusen’s address · Opening · “No other cause in the whole world....” · Second day of deliberation · Stanhope · Gladstone’s proposal · Debate over the tribunal plan · Dr. Hirsch puts on the brake · Rejoinder by Frédéric Passy and Houzeau · Randal Cremer · Concluding festivities in Scheveningen
My memory retains as the most important events of the year 1894 our participation in the Sixth Peace Congress at Antwerp and in the Interparliamentary Conference which followed immediately at The Hague. Another festal journey into unfamiliar countries, and another stage of progress in the triumphant march of an Idea!
Before the assembling of the Congress the Belgian Minister of State, Le Bruyn, laid before King Leopold a report setting forth the remarkable growth of the movement and adducing as a proof of it the fact that in countries like Austria and Germany, which hitherto had held aloof from the cause, great peace societies had sprung into existence and found fruitful soil. The king’s reply to this report was the establishment of a committee whose duty it should be to forward the labors of the Peace Congress that was to meet at Antwerp. The committee, composed of thirty members, included the most distinguished names in Belgium, in large part officials connected with the government.
The opening session took place on the twentieth of August, in the great hall of the Athenæum. We had arrived the day before, and had looked about a little in the commercial metropolis of Belgium, and had spent the evening in pleasant intercourse with several of our friends who had journeyed thither from all parts of the world.
Our new president, Houzeau de Lehaye, was in the number,—a lively little man, full of wit and possessing the gift of fascinating eloquence. As chairman he conducted the proceedings with tact and firmness, and whenever in succeeding Congresses he took part in the debates, as he was particularly apt to do if any obstacles had to be avoided, one could always depend on his tact.
“Twenty-four years ago,” Houzeau told us that first day, “I visited the battlefield of Sedan. I have the impression of it still before me,—those corpses, those temporary graves, those flocks of ravens, the troops of maddened horses tearing over the plain, the wounded and dying lying in their gore, the teeth clinched in the agony of tetanus, the columns of prisoners of war, the heaps of discarded weapons, and in the midst of a grass plat the brass instruments of a military band surprised by the enemy in the climax of the saber song from ‘The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.’ And I saw white sheets of letter paper, covered with the simple messages of love of mothers and sweethearts, flying round in the autumn wind until they fell into lakes of blood; and the horrible vision of countless bones and bleeding flesh all trodden down into the mire.... The peasants had fled from their villages across the neighboring boundary, and were then returning slowly to find misery and ruin, to which they would later have to succumb; and this,” he added, as he concluded his reminiscences with restrained passion, “is this to be the sum of civilization?”
Houzeau de Lehaye is a decided advocate of free trade. In his opening address, in which he depicted the errors and prejudices lying at the foundation of any defense of the institution of war, he said:
There is still another error which does not indeed involve a brutal battle of saber and cannon, but nevertheless is not much less calamitous. In spite of all the counter-evidence of the political economists, in spite of repeated results based on experience, yet how widespread is the prejudice that a nation becomes poor when the prosperity of neighboring peoples makes too rapid advances. And in order to preserve an imaginary equilibrium they hasten to have recourse to a protective tariff. And this war of the tariffs is not less destructive than the other. By a righteous retribution this weapon chiefly wounds those that wield it. And all these errors have their foundation in the false notion of the source of wealth and prosperity. It is worth while to note that there is only one source,—labor!
One would think that such simple truths would not require to be stated at this late day, for it is clear enough that wealth can be increased only from the creation of material things and not through mere change of place,—from Peter’s pocket into Paul’s; a transaction which, in addition, often means the destruction of the values shuffled this way and that. But the simpler, the more self-evident a truth is, the more it is wrapped up in the veils and fogs of old prejudices and current phraseology, and therefore it does much good to hear it once again spoken out so frankly and clearly.
This time there was a Portuguese at the Congress,—Magelhaes Lima, the publisher of the radical-liberal newspaper O Seculo. From America came Dr. Trueblood, who has never missed any of the European Peace Congresses.
I remember a lovely trip on the Schelde in a steamship put at our service by the government. Then a trip was made to Brussels between two sessions. A deputation of five members of the Congress, conducted by Houzeau, was received in audience by King Leopold. Frédéric Passy, Count Bothmer from Wiesbaden, my husband, and I made up the deputation. We drove from the railway station to the palace. In the audience chamber the king came to meet us,—recognizable instantly even at a distance by his long, square white beard,—and Houzeau presented the rest of us. I no longer recollect anything that was said; probably it was of small consequence. I only know that the king seemed to be on very jovial terms with Houzeau de Lehaye, for he slapped him several times laughingly on the shoulder. I remember one sentence that King Leopold said to us:
“The sovereign of a perpetually neutral state, like Belgium, must naturally feel interested in the question of international pacification. But of course,” he added,—and thereby all that he had said before was “of course” taken back,—“to protect this neutrality we must be armed.”
“What we are working for in our circles, your Majesty,” one of us replied, “is that the security of treaties should rest on law and honor and not on the power of arms.”
Houzeau did not wait to be dismissed, but himself gave the signal for departure. “The train does not wait—it knows no etiquette,” said he. There was another little tape d’amitié on our president’s shoulder: “You care mighty little for etiquette yourself, my dear Houzeau....”
Immediately after the Antwerp Congress the Interparliamentary Conference was opened. This year, having been invited by the Netherlands government, it met at The Hague. As we were not Parliamentarians we had no title to be present, but Minister van Houzeau had sent me the following letter under date of May 23:
Dear Baroness:
On account of my appointment as Minister I have left the committee on organization of the Interparliamentary Conference; yet I hope, as representative of the government, to give to the Conference the address of welcome in September. The limited space in the hall where the meetings are to be held will permit only a small number of guests and representatives of the press to be present; nevertheless the committee will doubtless assure so prominent an advocate of the peace cause a place among the very first. It will delight me to greet you as well as your husband here in September, and also our friend Pirquet and, if possible, others from your country.
Our hospitable city, with its splendid beach, will permit visitors to combine the useful with the agreeable; and the assured visit of many prominent men will, it is to be hoped, permit the Conference, in which the presidents of both our chambers will take part, to accomplish something beneficial in regard to the practical promotion of international arbitration.
With friendly greeting, your devoted
S. van Houzeau
Thus the opportunity was afforded us of being present during the notable debates of that national representative Conference which was the precursor—and, one may say the cause—of the later Conference of nations at The Hague.
On the day of the opening session, the third of September, there was a reception in the rotunda of the Zoölogical Garden. Here the participants and the guests met together. The president of the Conference, Rahusen, made an address to the foreign Parliamentarians, from which I took down in my notebook the following sentences:
If we pass beyond the boundaries of our country, do we imagine ourselves in a hostile land? Have you had any such experience in coming here? I believe that I am justified in saying No.
... It is a phenomenon of our time that we find a solidarity among the nations such as did not formerly exist.
... I know well that there are still men who ridicule such ideas; meantime let us rejoice that no one condemns them.
... The morning glow of international righteousness indicates the setting of the old war sun. If the last rays of this sun—which, decrepit with age, has already lost its blaze and its warmth—shall once be wholly extinguished,[8] then we, or those who come after us, shall be filled with jubilant joy, and shall be astonished that the civilized world could ever have called in brute force as an arbiter between nations no longer inimical to each other but bound together by so many common interests.
After this official part of the evening the company sauntered out into the open air, where the friends, some promenading, some taking places at tables about the rotunda, met and remained chatting till midnight.
At ten o’clock the next morning the formal opening took place in the assembly hall of the First Chamber of the States-General, a hall not very large but as high as a house and having its ceiling decorated with splendid paintings. I had a place in the gallery and enjoyed the magnificent spectacle, as the representatives of fourteen different parliaments took their seats one after another at the green-covered tables, while the members of the government who were to greet the Conference took places on the president’s dais. Minister van Houten, of the Interior Department, made the first address:
“No other cause in the whole world,” said he, “equals in magnitude that which is to be advocated here.”
I must delay a moment over this statement. It expresses what at that time formed (and forms equally to-day) the substratum of my feelings, thoughts, and endeavors, and likewise explains why in this second portion of my memoirs the phases of the peace movement take up so much space.
“No other cause in the whole world equals this in magnitude,”—I am not expressing a personal opinion, I am quoting; this is a conviction so deeply and religiously instilled into my mind (this is usually called a vocation!) that I cannot confess it often and loudly enough. Even if I knew that nine tenths of the cultured world still disregarded and ignored the movement, and one of these nine tenths went so far as to be hostile to it,—that is of no consequence; I appeal to the future. The twentieth century will not end without having seen human society shake off, as a legal institution, the greatest of all scourges,—war.
In writing my diary I am accustomed, when I am making note of situations which are threatening or promising, to mark them with an asterisk, then to turn over twenty or thirty blank pages and write, “Well, how has it resulted? See p. —.” Then when, in the course of my entries, I come quite unexpectedly on this question, I can answer it. And so here I ask some much, much later reader, who perchance has fished this book out from some second-hand dealer’s dust-covered bookshelf, “Well, how has it resulted? Was I right?” Then he may write on the margin the answer,—I see the gloss already before me,—“Yes, thank God!” (19??).
And now, back to The Hague, 1894. The proceedings of the first day resulted in nothing noteworthy. The second made up for it! Whoever reads the report of that day’s proceedings from a critically historical point of view can detect in it the embryo of the later Hague Tribunal, which, in turn, is at present only the embryo of what is yet to be.
Goals attained? The believer in evolution does not require them for his assurance; the line which shows the direction taken is enough.
I took my seat in the gallery in the greatest excitement, as at the theater when an interesting star performance is promised by the programme. The order of the day ran: “Preliminary Plan for the Organization of an International Tribunal of Arbitration,” presented by Stanhope.
A new man,—the Right Honorable Philip James Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s younger brother and intimate friend of the “grand old man,” Gladstone. At Gladstone’s direct instance Stanhope had come to the Conference in order to put before it the outcome of June 16, 1893, when in the English House of Commons Cremer’s motion was carried, and the Premier, in supporting it, appended the dictum that arbitration treaties were not the last word in assuring the peace of the world; a permanent central tribunal, a higher council of the powers, must be established.
Stanhope began his speech amid the breathless attention of the assembly. He speaks in the purest French, almost without accent. And in spite of all his unruffled clarity he speaks with such fire that he is frequently interrupted with shouts of applause. After he had explained Gladstone’s proposal he proceeded:
It is our duty now to bring this demand courageously before the governments.
Everything which up to the present time appertains to so-called international law has been established without precise principles, and rests on accidents, on precedents, on the arbitrary decisions of princes. Consequently, international law has made the least progress of all sciences, and presents a contradictory mass of ambiguous waste paper (de paperasses vagues).
Two great needs stand before the civilized nations,—an international tribunal, and a code corresponding to the modern spirit and elastic enough to fit new progress. This would insure the triumph of culture and do away with the criminal recourse to deadly encounters.
As things are to-day, fresh military loans are demanded in every parliament, and we are lashed by the press until we give our consent.[9] It would be otherwise if we could reply: “The dangers against which the armaments demanded are to protect us would be obviated by the tribunal which we desire.” Therefore a project ought to be elaborated which we might lay before the governments.
Here Stanhope developed a few points which were to be established as the basis of the organization, and he concluded with these words:
If next year we approach the governments with such a plan, and if our action were in unison, the future would give us the victory; at all events, the moral victory would be assured to us in having done our whole duty.
Then came a debate. The German deputy, Dr. Hirsch,—from the beginning the Germans have performed the function of the brake in the Peace Conferences,—speaks against Stanhope’s proposition, nevertheless recognizing the noble ideas so eloquently presented:
It is essential that the members of the Conference should pass only such resolutions as are comprehensible and practicable, and as may be presented to the parliaments with some probability of their being accepted; now Herr von Caprivi would certainly never take into consideration the project of an international tribunal. We ought to avoid also inviting the curse of absurdity through plans of that kind; for opponents are only too much inclined to ridicule the members of the Conference as dreamers.
Houzeau de Lehaye springs from his seat like a jack-in-the-box:
In view of such great ideas [he shouts] as those that have just been developed, in view of the establishment of a cause by such men as Stanhope and Gladstone, the word “absurd” should never be uttered again! [Applause.] I second the motion.
Now the revered Passy arises:
I should like to enter my protest against a second word which my honored friend, Dr. Hirsch, has used,—the word “never.” No great advancement, no innovation, has ever been carried through, but that the prediction has been made at the beginning that it could never be done. For example, that parliamentarians from all nations should meet to discuss the peace of the world, that they should do this in the assembly hall of the Upper House of a monarchical state,—if the question had been propounded five years ago, When will all this happen? who would not have answered, “Never!”
And, in fact,—Passy accidentally hit upon the very figure,—five years later, on the 29th of July, 1899, the International Tribunal was established in the very city where the plan for such a tribunal, proposed by Gladstone, was laid on the table. Dr. Hirsch’s “never” did not last very long! To be sure, this tribunal does not as yet possess a mandatory character; the protesters who were active in objecting to the establishment of the tribunal at all saw to it that it should not have this character. And all who cling to the institution of war are also persuaded that this shall never be.
Many other speakers supported the motion, and at last it was adopted with acclamation.
I felt deeply moved; so did My Own, who sat beside me; we exchanged a silent pressure of the hand.
The members were then chosen who should formulate the plan which was to be laid before the next year’s Conference.
This plan,—I anticipate events in order to show that that session was really historical,—this plan was presented to the Conference of 1895, at Brussels, was accepted and sent to all the governments, and assuredly contributed to the calling of the Hague Conference in 1898, and served as a basis for the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and its regulations.
That session brought one other sensation. After Stanhope’s motion was adopted, Randal Cremer mounted the platform. He was greeted with loud applause. He, together with Frédéric Passy, had been the inaugurator of the Interparliamentary Conferences. He had secured the signatures for the Anglo-American arbitration treaty, first in his own country and then, after crossing the ocean, in the United States; and it was due to him that the motion on that famous sixteenth of June, 1893, was adopted with Gladstone’s aid. His mode of speaking is simple and unadorned; he betrays clearly the former laboring man.
After the session he came up to us in the corridor and informed us that before leaving home he talked with Lord Rosebery; that he had not been permitted to repeat at the Conference what the Premier had said to him, but it had been of the most encouraging character. His feeling of confidence communicated itself to us.
The concluding banquet took place in the assembly room at Scheveningen. The orchestra played all the national hymns in succession. I sat between Rahusen and Houzeau. Stanhope delivered an extraordinarily keen and witty speech, the venerable Passy one full of eloquence and fire. I also had to speak. Fireworks were set off on the esplanade. The final apotheosis formed the words Vive la Paix, glowing in fiery letters, over which beamed a genius with a branch of palms.
What thoughts were in the minds of the guests of the watering-place as they promenaded by and stared at us? Probably none, and they were not so very far wrong; for what is left after the words have ceased, the toasts have been pledged, and the fireworks have been sent off? Nothing! From far down in the depths must the energies come through which epochs are changed.…