SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER
1904
THREE WEEKS IN AMERICA
The Bremen Rathauskeller · The Emperor’s beaker · A peaceful voyage · A ship on fire · A curious contradiction · The Statue of Liberty · Tariff vandals · The first interviewers · First impression of New York · Old comrades · The “yellow press” · The Interparliamentary Conference · Secretary Hay’s address · Public meetings · Russia and Japan shake hands · A Chinese lady · The Boston Public Library · Sojourn in New York · The “smart set” · Carl Schurz · The Waldorf-Astoria · The worship of bigness · At the Pulitzers’ · The World · Philadelphia · Fairmount Park · Two days in Washington · A conversation with Roosevelt · “Universal peace is coming” · A peace meeting at Cincinnati · Niagara Falls · An advertising monstrosity · A visit in Ithaca
For the English-American edition of this book I will add a few reminiscences of my visit to the United States as I committed them to paper in October, 1904, while returning to Europe.
Here on board the Kaiser Wilhelm II I find time and leisure to set down in my diary some of the multitudinous and vivid impressions whereby the store of my experiences has been increased through my brief, all too brief, sojourn on the other side of the ocean.
The thirteenth World’s Peace Congress was opened in Boston on the fourth of September. That was the object of my journey; so I was not induced to cross the ocean by my desire to make acquaintance with the New World, and yet a wholly and completely new world was revealed to me.
I will begin at the embarkation. My traveling companion and I spent the evening before in the senators’ room of the Rathauskeller at Bremen, where the local group of the German Peace Society had arranged a small festivity in our honor.
I saw there the enormous hogshead which holds ever so many gallons, and the one that is filled with such precious old wine that every drop is reckoned as worth so many hundred marks, and the beaker from which Emperor William II is accustomed to drink when he visits the wine cellar, and—what pleased me most—the model of the fountain on which the quaint city musicians of Bremen are portrayed, namely, the ass on which stands the dog which supports the cat on which sits the cock,—possibly very clever, but certainly extremely lean, tone artists.
The next morning, which was bright and clear, we proceeded to Bremerhaven by a special train. This train takes transatlantic passengers only, and stops directly opposite the gangway of the steamship. When we arrived at the dock, gay music was pealing from the deck, and we went on board as if we were embarking for a pleasure sail.
After a brief hour’s delay our floating palace, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, gets under way. The receding rim of the harbor is filled with people still waving their farewells, and the travelers on the decks are also waving in response. At the same time the ship’s orchestra has begun to play again. It is a melancholy moment, although the soul is raised on high with expectation as we sail out over the broad ocean into another portion of the world, into the land of unlimited possibilities, and away from the old home, perhaps never to be seen again. What thoughts fill the emigrant’s soul? Experienced globe-trotters, who cross the great pond every year, may be as calm and cool at this moment as we are when we hear the signal for the starting of the train from Mödling Station to Vienna; but I, who was making my first trip across the Atlantic, experienced something of the solemnity of a parting mood, although I left nothing behind save an urn of ashes!
It was a beautiful, smooth passage, with only two or three hours of pitching and discomfort during the whole voyage, which was free from fog and storm. We had a very agreeable captain,—I had the privilege of sitting at his right hand at dinner,—and also very interesting traveling companions. Ah! and this beneficial state of emancipation from the woes and the worries of the day, and no newspaper with descriptions from the theater of war. Fortunately the Marconi system is not sufficiently advanced to give us daily tidings in full detail. That is destined to come about, but it is to be hoped that the news then will contain fewer barbarities. Ultimately the moral improvement of the world must keep step with the technical.
We went through a half hour of anxious excitement on the high seas. We were sitting comfortably on deck, reclining in our steamer chairs, engaged in reading or contemplation of the play of the waves, or lazily thinking of nothing at all, when suddenly a commotion began on board. There was a clamor of voices, and sailors ran hither and thither. The travelers rushed to one place on the quarter-deck.
“It is sinking!” cries one.
“What is sinking?” I inquire, with pardonable interest; “our ship?”
“No—do you see—yonder—”
Now I, too, hasten to the rail; I see at some distance a sailing vessel, a three-master, rocking on the waves. It is on fire; our ship hastens toward her under full steam. Possibly there may be something there to be rescued,—even human beings raising agonized prayers for aid.
That was not the case; the vessel was a derelict. But if there had been men on board, how we should have trembled, how anxiously we should have followed the work of rescue that our captain would have set on foot with all zeal, and how we should have clamored with jubilation had he succeeded. Even if there had been no more than one man on board the unfortunate craft, and he had been rescued from the extremity of despair, what joy! But when the next Marconi dispatch brings the news of a bath of blood at Port Arthur or Mukden,—that is merely an interesting piece of news! What an insane contradiction! In regard to this I will only say that such things must cease, for contradictions cannot prevail; they annihilate themselves; that is the law of nature. The time will come when the sacred sea, that binds all nations together, that distributes wealth among them, that has been made serviceable through the powers of man for the aims of happiness, will be no longer desecrated by explosive mines and submarine instruments of destruction.
On the seventh day we entered the harbor of New York; the Statue of Liberty held out her torch to greet us,—a torch so great that a man can take a walk around its handle. But grand and triumphant as the statue is, its ideal falls below it even in America, which in the national hymn arrogates to itself the proud title, “Land of the noble free.” If ever there was a dream projected into the future, it is the dream of freedom, up to the present time unfulfilled everywhere, yet ripening toward fulfillment. Perhaps America, the young land unoppressed by ancient traditional fetters, is the land where that torch will first flame forth and then illuminate all the corners of the earth.
I had, by the way, my first taste of its lack of freedom, at the dock, where the vandals of the tariff rummaged in the depths of my trunks and subjected my fur cloak to a searching examination. Heaven be praised, it was not sealskin! And while I was trembling with the excitement of the inspection, three reporters were asking me about the programme of the Peace Congress and about the prospects of the war in eastern Asia.
“Who will win, Russia or Japan?”
“Both will lose,” I replied, opening a trunk—(to the customs officer) “Only old clothes!”—(to the reporters) “Both will lose, and mankind with them.”
We proceeded directly to Boston, and, as night had already come on, the first impression of New York, which we crossed from Hoboken to the Forty-second Street Station, was only one mad whirl of dazzling lights, roaring streets, and houses high as the sky!
Boston has the reputation of being the most European city in the United States, and likewise the capital of intellect. Really I have not much to offer in the way of descriptions and observations; Boston for me was the gathering place of this year’s Peace Congress, and as such absorbed all my thoughts and attention. Here I was, then, once more in another quarter of the world, and just as at Rome and Budapest, as in Hamburg and Paris, among good old comrades; once more I was on the international forum, where the ideal of international friendship, with its promise of happiness, is practiced among the participants and is striven for in behalf of contemporary and succeeding generations.
The sessions of the American Peace Congress showed clearly enough what immense strides the peace movement has recently made, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the awful wholesale slaughter in eastern Asia, which arouses universal horror. The conviction that this matter is not only one of the weightiest questions of the time, but is the question of the future, and is the foundation on which a new era of civilization, already dawning, is to be erected, is penetrating into ever wider and wider circles, and is already forming in America a consistent part of public opinion, as was well shown by the course of the thirteenth Peace Congress and the interest taken in it by the people.
Of course there, as everywhere, one finds a chauvinistic tendency, a “yellow press,” imperialistic appetites, and the like; but in corroboration of the above-expressed opinion, that the peace question is the predominant one in the public mind, stands the fact that in the presidential campaign now convulsing the whole country the peace sentiment is incorporated into the platform of the Democratic party, and that Roosevelt’s opponents are striving to belittle, as an election maneuver, the peace policy which he is now so energetically advocating. The great mass of the people, and especially the more intelligent classes of the country, are strongly opposed to an unlimited increase of the navy, and to the spread of military institutions and of the warlike spirit.
A remarkable land, “Land of Unlimited Possibilities,” as it has been called in the well-known book title; verily it might rather be called “Land of Conquered Impossibilities.” Indeed, this young world,—in the true sense of the word, this New World,—exuberant in strength, glad in its daring, with peculiar insistency “gets on the nerves” of people of strong conservative feelings. But any one who looks to the future, any one who cherishes a comforting faith in development, will here feel joyously strengthened in his hopes of progress. Certainly all the acquisitions of the New World will redound to the advantage of the Old World, just as all the treasures of culture of the Old have been taken over and will still continue to be taken over by the New. It would be good if Europeans, eager to learn and to know, might be turned to America, in such mighty throngs as America pours into Europe. Yes, the nations have to learn from one another; that is better than for them to blow one another into the air. If one man desires to climb higher than another, he must mount on the other’s shoulders, but not throw him down.
The recent period, during which a World’s Fair and such numerous congresses—the Interparliamentary Conference and Scientific Congress at St. Louis, the Peace Congress in Boston, and the like—have attracted to America so many Europeans, will do a vast amount toward widening the knowledge and at the same time the appreciation of what we should get from and for America.
But let us return to the peace meetings. This time I was unfortunately unable to attend the Interparliamentary Conference. What a brilliant success it was we shall soon know by report. The members of the Conference were the guests of the government, and as such were specially honored, not only by the officials but also by the inhabitants of all the cities that they visited; and their two most important resolutions—the calling of a second Hague Conference and the establishment of a permanent International Congress for the discussion of world interests—have been laid before President Roosevelt and by him in a measure put in motion.
Who can doubt that the calling of a new Hague Conference, just as was the case with the first, will meet with much opposition, and that attempts will be made to belittle its significance and render nugatory its results? Nothing great and new is ever accomplished without opposition. But just as the first Conference, in spite of everything, left behind it not only the fact of the tribunal established and the text of the agreements “for the peaceful solution of international conflicts by means of the Court of Arbitration, mediation, and commissions for intervention,” but also the solemn declaration that the moral and material welfare of the nations requires a reduction of the burden of armaments, so also the next Conference will certainly bring forth further and fresh results. Granted we have the letter of the law already, all that is required is to breathe into it the spirit of life. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” says the proverb; but where the way is all open the will must be exerted.
I obtained accurate details concerning the satisfactory proceedings of the Interparliamentary Conference, and the reception of their delegation at the White House, from the lips of several of its members, who, being also members of the Peace Unions, attended the Boston Congress, of which they brought us reports. Among them were William Randal Cremer (the last year’s laureate of the Nobel peace prize), Dr. Clark, Houzeau de Lehaye, and H. La Fontaine.
The opening of the Congress in Boston took the form of an imposing festival. Begun with religious exercises, supported by the lively interest of the public and the press, the event was regarded, throughout the country, as the event of the day; and all the more as the first statesman of the United States, John Hay, delivered the address of greeting. In this address, which, by the way, was telegraphed all over the world, there were none of those diplomatic “ifs” and “buts” and “to be sures” and “on the other hands” which are customary on such occasions; it was a frank, unreserved recognition of the justice and attainability of the aim of the Congress, and it contained the declaration that a new diplomacy and a new system of politics henceforth must accept the golden rule (“What ye will not have done unto you, etc.”) as a pattern of conduct,—a rule which has been banished from high politics hitherto by so-called practical politicians, on the ground that it was unpractical and idealistic. At this introductory meeting the great hall of Tremont Temple was filled to the last seat, and at least three thousand people tried in vain to obtain entrance.
About one hundred and twenty delegates came from Europe. That is not a large number; the majority and the most prominent among them came from England. Carnegie, whose attendance had been announced, was prevented from coming, and merely sent a significant letter. There were legions of addresses of approbation from various bodies, religious, scientific, industrial, and the like. One of the most noteworthy addresses, and absolutely unique considering the source from which it came, was subscribed, “Twenty-third Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry.”
Besides the regular transactions, which were followed by large, attentive, and receptive audiences, the Congress gave a great series of public meetings at which the peace question was elucidated from different points of view, as, for example, “the peace question and the school,” “the peace movement and socialism,” “the duties and responsibilities of woman in the peace movement,” and the like. The classes concerned thronged to all these meetings,—the women to one, educators to another, and laboring men to the third.
A meeting touching the question of disarmament, and offering as its chief speaker the well-known General Miles, was attended by many military men,—probably by some of that Twenty-third Regiment. If the Twenty-third Regiment has so much intelligence, there is no reason why the Twenty-fourth, and other regiments—and in other states as well as in Massachusetts—should not understand that, though they will do their duty while war exists, nevertheless the “warless time”—as the Prussian Lieutenant Colonel Moritz von Egidy saw it coming—is worth striving for.
The public interest aroused by these addresses was so great that, although several meetings were held simultaneously and in large auditoriums, every place was always filled to overflowing. The speakers were always assured of the greatest applause when they called attention to the fact that America’s glory and grandeur consisted in having attained such proportions without a standing army, safe without defense, giving the world an example of peace; likewise when voices were raised against imperialism, which seemed to be gaining ground in many places, or against the threatening increase of the navy and the danger that the poison of militarism might infect the whole land. Since the war with Spain this virus has certainly worked its way into the system; but, judging from what we saw, heard, and read in the papers (with the exception of the “yellow” journals), the American organism is protecting itself vigorously against it and will, it is to be hoped, cast it out altogether.
The scenes that took place at the socialist congress at Amsterdam were repeated on the Boston platform,—a Japanese and a Russian shook hands amid a storm of applause. According to old concepts were not both of them traitors to their native countries? Or is the whole thing somewhat comical? On the contrary, is not this action more attractive than that which was related on the same day in a report from the theater of war. In one grave two dead men were found clutching each other; the hand of the Japanese was clinched on the Russian’s throat and the Russian’s fingers had penetrated the eye sockets of the Japanese.
A Hindoo, in native costume, from the sacred land of the Lama, was also there. He complained of the desecration that the war had wrought in the monks’ places of devotion. “I come from the jungles,” so his speech began, “and to the jungles I return.”
A tiny Chinese woman, also in national costume, was one of the most popular speakers at the Congress. Her name is Dr. Kim. Educated by English missionaries, she had come to America to study medicine, and now she is going back to China to practice there. She speaks exquisite English, and with the sweetest voice and a smiling mouth she spoke the bitterest truths to the Europeans about the presumption with which they were trying to impose their warlike civilization upon an older and peaceful culture, and their dogmas upon a ripened philosophical view of the world, and, finally, were aiming to treat the Chinese Empire as a country to be looted.
“We can learn much from you, friends” (the word “friends” she spoke with a peculiarly sweet intonation), “that we grant; and if those lusts of conquest prevail, then we shall have to be grateful for learning from you, friends” (spoken tenderly), “the art of defending ourselves successfully against you.”
I have had opportunity for but little sight-seeing about Boston, for the days were filled with meetings and labors. But the Public Library I did visit. Oh, those book palaces, those book cathedrals in America! What is not granted there to the people hungry for learning! And in what form it is given! The building is adorned with all the magic of architectural and plastic arts; the frescoes that adorn the palatial stairway—designed by Puvis de Chavannes—are a poem; another great master, Sargent, was intrusted with the decoration of some of the inner rooms. Beauty everywhere!
There is a widespread notion that the American possesses only a business sense and not an æsthetic sense; that the cities with their “cloud-scratchers” and elevated roads and warehouses are ugly. What a mistake! The horn of plenty that has scattered its treasures over this land has not forgotten beauty any more than wealth. Not to speak of natural beauties—Niagara Falls, the Rocky Mountains, and the like—I mean the works of man. Whoever planted woodbine, ivy, and other vines, to clamber in rich luxuriance up the walls, even to the roofs of houses and churches, knew that he was creating beauty. Here again nature comes to man’s aid, for the autumn foliage glows and gleams in colors which are quite unknown in our landscapes. In contrast with the brilliant hues there are soft and tender tones,—such an azure green, such a rosy gray, such a bright golden violet as only the most audacious art secessionist would venture to mix on his palette.
After the close of the Boston Congress public meetings were arranged in many other cities,—New York, Philadelphia, Worcester, Springfield, Northampton, Toronto, Buffalo, Cincinnati, and elsewhere; and in these places the principal men and women who had been speaking at the Peace Congress gave lectures concerning the transactions there and the peace movement in general. Everywhere were the same enthusiastic interest on the part of the public, the same dignified treatment on the part of official circles, and the same detailed and approving reports from the press. Our lectures were desired and applauded in churches, universities, girls’ schools, workingmen’s homes, concert halls,—everywhere.
On my return to New York I got somewhat acquainted with the city. The word “acquainted,” though, seems presumptuous when I had only a few days, or rather a few hours—for the days were filled for the most part with the duties of my calling—to devote to this giant phenomenon, this city of three millions. Nevertheless, even what is seen as quickly as in a lightning flash can leave an abiding impression, especially when it is so surprising and overpowering. If I were to sum up the impression that America made on me, I might say that I was affected somewhat as Bellamy’s hero was, who, after sleeping for many years, wakes up in an absolutely changed and improved world. Not as if, as in the case described by Bellamy, several centuries had been passed in sleep, but rather as if two or three decades, filled with discoveries and other advances, had been anticipated; thus seemed everything around me. The woman movement, the anti-alcohol movement, the social movement, technical arts, popular education, democratic spirit, toleration, comfort of living, luxury, physical development,—everything speedily carried forward and upward to a climax. A still deeper impression than the one made by all that was so abundantly flowering there (I grant that there may be also many poisonous plants in the garden) was made upon me by what is planted there, by what is still hidden in the seeds but is full of promise for rich harvests in the future. Education is power, education is freedom, education is ennoblement; and from that treasure, which is indeed imported from the Old World, such mighty systems of culture multiplied and disseminated will be established in the New World that for the coming generations an inestimable raising of the general standard of life is to be expected. I have had the opportunity to see universities, colleges, and libraries, and to hear about the settlements of university extension. “Education,” said an American lady to me, “is something which we feel in duty bound to disseminate widely; the whole people must be able to share in it.”
All the development of magnificence, all the zeal in conferring donations, which in the Old World has been shown in princely palaces and cathedrals, in the New World—and from far richer sources—flows into places for education. That, indeed, up to the present time, more fundamental knowledge is to be obtained at European universities is indicated by the fact that Americans whose means permit it, and who are particularly ambitious, come to us to study, and that all the professors and scientists there regard it as a privilege to be able to spend a few years as students in our higher institutions; but I am speaking now of the dissemination, especially the coming dissemination, of public instruction, which is still so young in America. Its deepening will come of itself, together with the rejection of much useless educational truck inherited from the olden days and not likely to be any longer useful for the new times.
Unfortunately I did not make the acquaintance of the so-called “smart set,” the upper four hundred, whose palaces line Fifth Avenue and who are so constantly regarded as the type of the leading classes in America—though as mistakenly so regarded as a certain Boulevard society is taken for the prototype of French character. It would have been very interesting to study this “smart set.” All that I saw was the outside of their palaces, but they certainly presented to the eye no remarkable splendor. Their possessors—the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and Morgans and Astors and others—at this season of the year were either still at their country estates or away traveling.
The huge opera house, in which German, French, and Italian operas, each in the original, are performed by the leading artists of the world, was not yet opened. The Italian opera will begin with Puccini’s Bohème, sung by Caruso and Marcella Sembrich. Madame Schumann-Heink, who is undertaking the rôle of Kundry, is just at present the object of many social attentions and incessant interviews. The performances of Parsifal, regarded by Frau Cosima Wagner as desecration, are said to have been of overwhelming beauty.
The Americans are importing all our treasures of refined art and old culture; for us there is only one revenge: we must absorb more and more of their acquisitions, give more attention to the life that is unfolding there, rise above envy and jealousy, above pride and prejudice,—those feelings which in an epoch of international intercourse are no longer suitable, and which in the past have stood in the way of the development of universal comity. For, after all, we are only one world; every treasure, every forward step in whatever corner of the earth, increases the wealth and the potentiality of happiness of the whole human family.
The words “human family” (a family as yet far from united, still living in bitter feud) bring me back to the theme that lay at the basis of my whole transatlantic journey,—the Peace Congress. In New York, among the festivities arranged in honor of the delegates, was a great meeting organized by the Germans living there. It was held in Terrace Garden under the honorary chairmanship of Oscar S. Straus, member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, former Ambassador Dr. Andrew D. White, and the universally respected Carl Schurz. “Why so respected?” This question was once put to Dr. White by Bismarck. “Tell me, on what grounds does the old forty-eighter enjoy such universal and high regard in your country?” “For this reason,” replied the American ambassador, “because he was the man who treated the slavery question, which at that time was the question, not, as was customary, from the philanthropical or the constitutional, but from the philosophical standpoint, with regard to its significance not for the negroes, but for the country.”
Perhaps, I might add, the Americans are so charmed by Carl Schurz because, when he was in a leading position in the public service, he called a halt in the increasing deforestation of the country. And, above all, because he is a personality! I made his acquaintance, and in his house spent one of the most exhilarating hours of my American visit.
I made a pilgrimage to Grant’s tomb, on the door of which his exclamation is carved, “Let us have peace!” And I saw the statue of General Sherman, who uttered the famous saying, “War is hell.” The hellish reports of the ten days’ battle raging in eastern Asia—where, at the very time when we in America were discussing the question of peace, the “field of honor” was covered with incredible numbers of the dead,—brought to us every day a confirmation of that utterance of General Sherman’s.
We inspected the famous hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria. It exceeds in size and splendor anything that has thus far been attained in the way of public houses. And yet a new hotel has just been opened in New York, called the St. Regis, which is said to be furnished even more luxuriously, with all sorts of art treasures, old Gobelins, masterpieces of painting, and the like; but it is small—intended only for the upper four hundred; I was told that the lowest price for a room was eight dollars a day.
The ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria is adorned with a painting proudly proclaimed by the guide as “the biggest canvas in the world.” Not the best-painted but the biggest canvas in the world! This naïve boastfulness is rather characteristic of the worship of the gigantic that prevails there. When our shops announce a sale they call it a “great sale”; the American advertisement invites you to a “mammoth sale.” The cicerone of the hotel called our attention to the fact that there are three thousand gilded chairs in the ballroom and the adjacent drawing-rooms, each with a different hand-painted scene on its cushion. One of our company immediately sat down on one of these artistically glorified chairs, apparently to test whether or not such delightful artistry aroused special sensations. I had a ride on the underground railway, which was to be opened to the public a few days later, but which had been “running” regularly for three months so that its use might be perfected before it was turned over to the public,—maneuver before the real attack!
I had the opportunity in New York of making the acquaintance of Mr. Pulitzer, the owner of the most widely circulated American newspaper, the World. His home (I was invited there to a luncheon) is of the most exquisite splendor, and two tall, wonderfully beautiful daughters are its life. But with all his wealth, all his power, the publisher of the World is a poor man. Two of the greatest blessings of life this otherwise vigorous, young-looking man, not yet sixty, has lost,—his eyesight and sleep. Nevertheless, he works incessantly, dictates his leading articles, watches and regulates the whole course of his great paper,—a paper which does not belong to yellow journalism, but, on the contrary, has long advocated the peace movement. A few years ago, when the relations between the United States and Great Britain were strained to the danger point, the World requested answers to a series of questions, and among the responses was one from the then Prince of Wales, which did much to allay the danger of war.
If I had lunched a day later at the Pulitzer house, I should have made the acquaintance of Roosevelt’s opponent, Mr. Alton B. Parker. The World favors the Democratic party