CHAPTER III
THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (concluded)
The International had an audience, a very large and interested one. It sat at the back of the room, glad of an experience which relieved for a while the tedium of life in Berne. Amongst the listeners of every nationality I observed Indians with turbans and Turks wearing the fez. There was a beautiful dark-eyed Jewess sporting three vast links of matchless pearls. A handsome American woman, full of vivacity, wearing a large picture hat, sat next to her husband, a tall, good-looking Hungarian with a clean-shaven face and an American accent to his excellent English. There was the faded but vivacious mistress of a notorious ex-king; two red-haired Greek ladies of extreme beauty; several ambassadors; a whole medley of chief secretaries; a gang of spies of both sexes, and a group of well-known pacifists engaged on preparations for their own conference, which was timed to follow the International. There was Mr. William Bullitt of the American Peace Delegation in Paris; Mr. George Lansbury, and Mr. John de Kay, famous for mystical millions! Last but not least there was a sharp little woman unknown to any of us who sprang upon Mr. Macdonald like a tiger-cat. “How dare you come to this conference to talk to the enemies of your country!” she demanded. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, you and Mrs. Snowden and all the others?” Mr. Macdonald was white with anger, but he behaved like a gentleman. If the lady had said it to me I should have told her that it took far less courage to come and talk to an ex-enemy than to marry one and produce four or five little enemies. The spiteful lady was an Englishwoman, and is the wife of an Austrian and the sister of a notorious English suffragette. She has several fine Austrian children!
There was something very interesting about those rabid anti-enemy people. Examine them closely and you found that those who hated most often did it because they were implicated either by birth or marriage in enemy associations, and felt it necessary to protest their loyalty as loudly and as frequently as possible. I believe that language also had a great deal to do with war affinities. People took the French or German side according to the language they had mastered! The knowledge of a foreign language is a distinguished accomplishment in a Briton! Protesting too much is always a mistake. I do not believe it has ever done the protestant one ounce of good. Often it has done positive harm by raising suspicion. I have a distinguished friend in England, German by birth, English by sympathies. From the beginning of the war he has taken the side of the Allies. His writings prove that unmistakably. The English authorities have treated him outrageously. It is a long and painful story. They refuse to allow him to stay in the country, although before the war he lived here for more than twenty years, owns property here, and his daughter was born here. He has abundant credentials from important people. He wants to adopt English citizenship. Nothing that is done to him can alter his devotion to this country; and yet the Home Office is inexorable. There are violent pan-Germans in this country who are suffering less than he—gentlemen on whom the Peace Treaty has bestowed a new nationality!
One particularly tiresome day, when the air of the Conference hall was thick and close with human breath and stale tobacco smoke, and when the lions raged more loudly than usual, pounding the table with their fists as they consigned to perdition their various antagonists, there walked into the room an interesting figure of a man whom nobody could forget who had seen him once. He was dressed in a grey suit, which matched his silvery hair, and showed in a marked way the exceptional breadth of his powerful shoulders set upon a short and sinewy frame. He walked the whole length of the room with all the dignity and solemnity of a reigning prince come to review his loyal troops; his head thrown back and his slightly swaying body vibrant with a self-importance and a quality of proprietorship more arresting than displeasing. A closer acquaintance with him as the Conference proceeded confirmed in everybody the judgment formed at the first casual glance, that the lines round his mouth and at the corners of his bright grey-blue eyes betokened a keen sense of humour.
His immense blue necktie fluttered shoulder-wards and marked him, in conjunction with a clean-shaven face, the American citizen, although it was alleged he was born in the East End of London. But where else in the world, unless in the Quartier Latin, would you find so much good cloth wasted on neckties as in America? Like big butterflies these enormous bows repose upon the breasts of their wearers, as serviceable as the Stars and Stripes in designating the home and habitation of their owners.
Mr. John de Kay was the mystery man of the Second International. Nobody knew whence he came nor whither he was going. His business in life was a secret never revealed. He was a mystery to a great many more than the delegates at the Socialist Conference. He had a castle in Switzerland and another in France. He had an estate in Mexico, and was persona grata with several revolutionary governments. His bust had been sculptured by Rodin. Sarah Bernhardt had appeared in one of his plays. He had written books on social science. He composed poems. He was a multi-millionaire, sprinkling his millions on the altar of good causes like talcum powder after a bath. He kept a marvellous suite of rooms at the Bernerhof, and ordered his dinner with the pompousness of a Napoleon commanding the advance of an army. All these things and a thousand others were said of this extraordinary man; but the mystery remained a mystery to the end.
He was anxious to finance the publicity work of the Second International, and actually contributed large sums to this side of the work both in Berne and in Lucerne. But his larger scheme never materialized. It was discovered later that he had a habit of offering millions for this cause or that, to the International, to the German Socialist Government, to the famine children of Austria, to Turkey, to Hungary; but never have I been able to discover that those millions were forthcoming. There was always some hitch in the business somewhere, some fantastic condition attached to the gift, or some impossible preliminary to carry through satisfactorily.
He was dreadfully impatient of what he called the “blue-sky politics” of some Socialists. He hated equally the politics of the White Guard reactionaries. Strange, queer, haunting character, with the lion head and the despot manner; time alone will tell us who you are and what your place in the scheme of things; but that you meant to help and not to hinder the work of the International I am profoundly convinced.
Mr. de Kay lost his favourite daughter a few months ago. She was drowned in Lake Michigan while on a visit to America. The mystery of her death, like the mystery of her father’s life, is still unsolved. She lies still and cold in her grave. But her father flits fitfully in and out of the game of international politics, too arresting a personality to be ignored, too mysterious a being to be acclaimed.
Seated in that part of the hall reserved for visitors was a dark-skinned Jewish lady wearing an enormous picture hat. It was not she of the ropes of pearls, but another and an older woman. She was dressed in a smart black dress and wore over it a valuable sealskin coat. She followed the debate with a certain amount of interest, but her black eyes roved restlessly around the room in search of somebody in particular. I did not flatter myself that I was the person she was seeking, but presently a little pasteboard card was passed along the line to me, and looking first at the card and then at the visitor, I caught the smile of the picture hat lady and recognized an old acquaintance. She was Frau Rosika Schwimmer, the first woman Minister.
The then Premier of Hungary, Count Karolyi, had signalized his term of office by several acts of a radical character, notably amongst them the appointment of a woman Minister to Switzerland. It was a bold thing to do, at such a time and in such a country, and of such a woman. I wish now that I had accepted the invitation to be the guest of Count Karolyi, extended to me in his name by his secretary and friend Herr Paul von Auer. Courage of this sort, which associates a man with feminism, is extremely rare. It would have been interesting to meet the man possessed of it. The conservatism of the Swiss is well known. They share with the Latin countries the dishonour of an unenfranchised womankind. To send to such a country the first woman Minister, and that woman a Jewess, was to challenge too violently the prejudices of the Swiss. The experiment was bound to fail.
Frau Schwimmer’s business with me was to ask my help with the organization of a women’s conference. Of course, the proposal interested me; but my mind travelled back to my previous association with Rosika and the occasion of my first meeting with her.
It was at the Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance of which Mrs. C. Chapman Catt is the President, held in London about ten years ago. Rosika (as everybody called her) was one of the most eloquent speakers in the Conference. Her style was ironic. She provoked shouts of laughter amongst the women by her pungent attacks on male mankind, and her wit and humour made of her a general favourite as a speaker. She and I were thought to be as great contrasts in our style of speaking as in our physical appearance, and a favourite design of organizers was to send the two of us to address the same meeting. This happened two years later at the Opera House in Stockholm, when the grave and the gay of the woman’s question were divided between the black and the blonde.
But I never really knew Frau Schwimmer till after our several meetings in America. The first occasion was a meeting in the theatre in Lexington, Kentucky, where we discoursed on women and peace to a fashionable audience. It says a great deal for Rosika’s power as a public speaker, that she was able by her eloquence to overcome amongst those critical American women a plainly expressed distaste for her peculiar style of dress. She affected at that time the loose, flowing robe more suggestive of the boudoir than the public platform. Black harmonized with our mood as well as hers, for the war was at its height; but the ill-fitting black gloves she persisted in wearing during her speech robbed her otherwise expressive hands of all their eloquence.
It was to the unauthorized activity of Rosika that I owed my meeting with President Wilson. A propaganda in favour of the calling by America of a conference of neutral nations for continuous mediation amongst the belligerents was being conducted all over the United States, with which I found myself in full sympathy. America was not then in the war, and the greater part of her citizens appeared to be hostile to the idea of entering. Their distaste for the war did not go the length of an all-round strict neutrality, economic as well as political; but there was a very genuine desire in 1915 on the part of vast numbers of American citizens to avoid active participation in the war, for reasons, for the most part, entirely honourable to themselves and the country.
One afternoon in November of that year I had already risen to address a great theatre full of business men in Milwaukee on the importance of their giving the vote to Wisconsin women when a telegram was handed to me: “President Wilson will receive us at the White House on November 23rd. Please return at once.—SCHWIMMER.”
I had not the faintest conception of what it was about. I looked at the message and read it twice. I was unable to believe my eyes. I had never sought an interview with the President. I had no business of sufficient importance to warrant my seeking his presence. I have always had too much respect for the time of busy men in high office to seek to use it on matters of other than the gravest consequence. I was filled with annoyance at having been placed, without my knowledge or consent, in the position of an intrusive and self-important busybody. But there was the invitation. The arrangement had been made. And my one consolation lay in the thought that the approachableness and well-known courtesy of the “First Gentleman of America” had made the thing possible and would make it delightful. But my indignation against the “meddlesome Matties” who had so outrageously interfered did not cool and is alive at this hour.
I had several important public engagements in Wisconsin and Illinois to fulfil, which I could not cancel without causing a vast amount of inconvenience and expense to organizers, so I wired that it would be a pleasure to attend at the White House if the meeting could be arranged for November 27.
I travelled a day and a night from Chicago to New York, tried there to find out what it was all about, heard a few vague stories sufficient to let me know that it had to do with the peace propaganda, and left the next morning for Washington. I arrived in Washington at 3 p.m. and was taken in a large automobile to one of the theatres where a big meeting was in full swing. Rosika rose to speak after I had taken my place on the platform. Her speech froze me to my chair with its passionate exaggerations: “Millions and millions of people are dying on the battlefields and in the homes of Europe,” she said, which since that time has become only too true. “Millions and millions of men are praying for peace,” which was totally untrue. If “millions and millions” of men in Europe had wanted peace they could have had it. “The soldiers of Europe are looking to you to deliver them——” and so on.
I had had no part in calling the meeting. I could only guess its purpose. I had no idea under whose auspices it was being held nor who was finding the money for it. My peace sympathies were unquestionable, but when I rose to speak I felt myself under a real obligation in the interests of truth to neutralize the impression made upon the minds of the audience by Rosika’s burning words.
“Alas!” I said, although these may not have been the exact words, “I am not able to say out of my own experience that the men of Great Britain are praying for peace. On the contrary they are voluntarily enlisting in millions for what they believe to be the most righteous cause they have ever served. The appeal I make to you is not to act in the belief that you are thereby saving millions of unwilling men forced by cruel tyrants to enter a war which they hate, but by conferring with other neutral nations to discover some terms, honourable to all concerned, which shall save from what they believe to be the absolute necessity of killing and being killed, the gallant young manhood of every nation which is in this fight.”
The meeting over, we drove to the White House through a great concourse of people. Frau Schwimmer and myself were received by the President with the dignity of a grand seigneur joined to the simplicity of a plain American citizen. I liked him. I believed in him. When years later men in Europe laughed at his idealism, I recalled my impression of him and felt he was sincere. When he failed, after the first awful shock of the failure, I believed he had failed where no man could succeed. During our conversation with him his hatred of the war was clear. His desire to maintain the peace in America and restore it, if possible, to Europe was unequivocal. He expressed very warmly his sympathy with the idea of a neutral conference. But the thought of practical difficulties oppressed him. Would China and the South American Republics be invited to such a conference? What should be the basis of representation? Would such an effort be looked upon with favour by the fighting Powers? Could anything be done except through the ordinary diplomatic channels? He welcomed Lord Courtney’s brave speech in the House of Lords and hoped it might be symptomatic. He looked for signs of a growing peace sentiment amongst the belligerents but found few. I agreed with him on this last point and remained silent. Rosika grew voluble, bitter, insulting. She hinted at America’s munition profiteering. The President flushed a little and looked annoyed.
“Surely,” he said warmly, “there are such profiteers in other countries?”
We talked for half an hour or more. The great crowd of men and women outside stood in silent prayer for the success of our effort. They were mostly members of religious organizations; and it was so arranged. Numbers of reporters with pencils and notebooks in hand surrounded us and pursued us in automobiles to the hotel where we had taken up our quarters. Here the secret spring of it all was revealed!
In a sumptuous suite of apartments at the Great Washington Hotel sat the great man. And in another equally sumptuous sat Rosika, with her army of secretaries. Her rooms were filled with costly flowers. Her meals were served privately by waiters specially chosen for the work. Messengers whose sole business appeared to be to attend to Frau Schwimmer’s every wish ran in and out in a constant stream. Newspaper men waited in the ante-room for such crumbs of news as she was disposed to scatter. Well-dressed and important-looking men and women left their cards. Busy, intense, energetic life thrilled through the whole of the hotel. Something more than the usual was afoot. What could it be?
It sprang from a source which kept itself hidden, except when at one dramatic moment in the theatre a thin, clean-shaven man with a keen, sensitive face leapt to his feet and declared in a loud, drawling voice: “I never made a speech before in my life. All I want to say is this: We’ll have those boys out of the trenches by Christmas.”
It was Henry Ford, the great manufacturer of automobiles. He meant every word he said and really believed it possible to do what he wished.
It was this generous, warm-hearted man who was finding the money for Rosika’s lavish expenditure. It was he who secured us the talk with President Wilson. It was he who had even then been involved by the dominating Rosika in the idea of the peace ship—the wonderful ship full of peacemakers which should sail to every neutral land in Europe and invite their Governments to persuade the warriors to make the peace.
As an advertisement for the peace idea the scheme had some value; but knowing something of the temperamental Rosika and her lack of staying power as well as of her extravagance, as anything more serious than that the plan was bound to fail. I felt an enormous pity for Mr. Ford, whom I failed to see after the meeting; but I doubt if at that time anyone could have convinced him that an ambitious woman was using him and his dollars in the most foolish and reckless enterprise that was instigated through the Great War.
I refused to have anything to do with it. I feared what actually happened, that the peace movement would be smothered in ridicule from one end of the world to the other, and that the reputation of sincere and able pacifists would be cheapened and vulgarized by this mad expedition to the ends of the earth of a company of individuals whose motives were mixed and whose abilities were in most cases mediocre.
What was my annoyance and astonishment when I boarded the ship for Liverpool the next morning to hear from a reporter of the New York Times who came to see me before sailing, that I had telephoned from Washington a full column of eulogy of the Ford peace ship in the form of an interview! I had done nothing of the sort. I had never had the telephone to my lips all the time I was in Washington. I had, moreover, travelled all night from Washington to be in time for my steamer the next morning. Someone had telephoned in my name!
Like the dove from the ark the gallant ship set sail with flying pennant; but in a little while crept back to port with drooping wing, dragging in her wake broken spirits and bedraggled reputations. Mr. Ford left before the end of the tour. The domineering Rosika became too much for him. The greatest discontent amongst the passengers throughout the tour was felt owing to the inaccessibility of Mr. Ford, who could never be reached without a permit from Frau Schwimmer. “Whenever we tried to reach him,” said one woeful and malicious pressman, “we found him entirely surrounded by Rosika!”
With the memory of this experience surging up I grew thoughtful as I looked at the little card in my hand. I made a cautious response to the smiles of the Hungarian woman Minister. Of course, I talked to her. Her new position interested us all. I asked her how she liked being a diplomat. She told us a sorry tale of treachery and espionage. The drawers of her bureau had been rifled, her telegrams opened before they reached her or altered when she sent them out. Everything had been done to make her position impossible. We were sorry and indignant till we heard that she had appointed these scoundrels herself and had made the mistake of having recalled many of the old Hungarian officials who had possessed a genuine desire to help her.
Some of these men had declined to go, and their side of the story was of shameless expenditure, unbridled personal extravagance at the cost of a poverty-stricken little state, mangled by the war and the peace, and suffering incredible penury. They spoke, it may be with malice, of an expensive automobile, costly furs, cut flowers and extravagant rooms, all paid for by her unhappy Government, bankrupt and despairing. The Bolshevik Revolution occurred a few days later.
She was recalled after a few weeks of office, having committed a number of political indiscretions involving the reputation with the Allies of at least one innocent and unsuspecting tool. This unfortunate lady was ignominiously returned to her native country.
Frau Schwimmer is of middle age and middle height, with masses of crisp wavy black hair slightly tinged with grey. She wears large gold-rimmed spectacles, and has a hard, aggressive manner and a loud, dominating voice. In speaking she uses her hands a great deal, the forefinger of the right hand playing a conspicuous part in the enforcing of her points. She has a quick intelligence with a brilliant surface cleverness, is sarcastic and voluble, good natured and easy going. She has temperament, but is without stability. She is cruel in her thoughtlessness, but, like her race, has a deep sense of loyalty to her family. She is genuinely devoted to the cause of feminism.
Another visitor to the International I feel constrained to do more than mention was Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York Nation and a lifelong friend of President Wilson. Mr. Villard has a rich inheritance from each side of his family. He is the descendant on the father’s side of one of the famous German revolutionaries who fled to America in 1848. His mother is the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison of anti-slavery fame.
During the visit to America, to which I have already referred, I met Mr. Villard and Mr. George Foster Peabody in the lobby of the House of Representatives in Albany. They apologized for not being able to attend the meeting of the State Legislators I was to address, as they were engaged on business connected importantly with the propaganda for keeping America out of the war. “Mr. Villard has just seen President Wilson—they are lifelong and intimate friends, you know—and he has the impression that enormous pressure is being put upon the President by a section interested in dragging this country into the war. We are very unhappy about it,” said Mr. Peabody.
This does not mean that when the war broke out Mr. Villard took neither side. His sympathies were pro-Ally and anti-German; but he hated the whole bad business of the war and desired to end it quickly. The severe terms of the Armistice and the startling conduct of the Paris Conference caused him to react favourably towards the Bolshevik Government. But from various reactions, he has come to the settled conviction of the need for the revision of the Peace Treaties, and for the establishment of some kind of international political organization like the League of Nations for the securing of permanent peace on the earth.
Mr. Villard is not unlike Mr. A. G. Gardiner, the popular one-time editor of the Daily News. Both men are tall and fair, both fresh complexioned and blue eyed. Both have the same political ideals; though I imagine a distinction inoffensive to both men might be made in expressing the view that Mr. Villard’s passionate hatred of the wrong causes him to swing more violently to the right or to the left and back again whenever he delivers himself up to the dominion of his warm-hearted and generous emotions.
I met Mr. Villard in the Hôtel Continental in Paris first, and persuaded him to come to Berne. There we dined together at the Vienna Café.
Berne is the famous capital of Switzerland. It is a lovely old city with quaint fountains and coloured houses. It is beautifully situated on a ridge of hills, with snow-covered Alpine ranges in the distance, the Jungfrau, handsome and conspicuous, in the middle. The swift river girdles the town, gleaming blue and green in the valley below.
There are stately new buildings in Berne, and a fine market square. There is the monument of the International Postal Union, a globe encircled by female figures clasping hands, representing the various races; and there is the bear pit with its fascinating shaggy inhabitants; but place all the attractions of Berne in one scale and the Wiener Café in the other, and the balance will sink in favour of the café, at least for those unhappy human beings compelled by the misfortunes of their country or the tragic circumstances of the Great War to spend their enforced exile in the restricting circumstances of a small Swiss city.
To the Wiener Café daily went these men and women to eat the food so renowned for its cooking. Where was such delicious coffee to be found in Berne? Where was there a greater variety of well-cooked and properly seasoned dishes? The wine was a glory. The Hungarian gipsy band played bewitching music, and brought home near enough for tears to those who came from the lands of the East.
But the Wiener Café drew men and women from the four corners of the earth for something more than its good food and glowing wines. They came for talk, to meet fellow exiles and entertain interesting strangers; to discuss the terrible march of events; to debate political theories; to escape loneliness; to hear gay music, and forget their sorrows in congenial fellowship.
Mr. Rinner of the Wiener Café radiated a welcome from his whole portly person. The waiters, always smiling and efficient, served you as if it were their great privilege to do so and not, as in so many English cafés, as though they were conferring a favour upon you. You never felt constrained to eat so fast that you choked in an effort to get out of the place as quickly as possible. You stayed hours if you desired to read or to play cards or chess. A second portion of every dish could be had if wanted without any further charge. All sorts of delightful odd corners, softly cushioned and conveniently partitioned, furthered conversation, and supplied a certain amount of privacy, contrasting favourably with the square horse-box appearance of so many eating houses in other places. And this is a typical good-class European restaurant.
I made my first acquaintance with the Wiener Café as the guest of Mr. Rudolf Kommer. Mr. Norman Angell and Mr. J. R. Macdonald were of the party. We talked for hours of the day’s happenings at the Conference, and reviewed the prospects of an early peace now rapidly vanishing into thin air. All the time there came through the glass partition the tantalizing strains of the ’cello and violin playing Hungarian dances. I had hoped to see as well as hear these gipsy musicians. And so it happened. The door opened and in they came to give us a private performance.
Smiling, bowing, they drew near to the table, almost bending over it, playing softly, sweetly, merrily, the expression of their faces interpreting the song. They had never studied a note of music. They played solely by ear. Yet they had caught the magic spirit of music, the soul and the rhythm of it. Their bodies swayed in time with the song. Their intimate black eyes invited to the dance. Our feet tapped time to their swaying forms. It was utterly joyous, abandoned, divine! I hear it now:
“Nimm Zigeuner deine Geige, lass sehn was du kannst.”
Our host crowned the evening’s enjoyment with stories of the old café’s famous habitués. At the very table where we were seated Lenin in exile had discussed his political philosophy with admirers and doubters through a summer’s night. In the chair I occupied the volatile and relentless Trotsky had lounged and gossiped. The charming, exuberant Prince Windischgraetz and his beautiful wife had frequently supped there. Crownless kings and exiled grand dukes had played their less dangerous game at the bridge-table in the corner. Poets and philosophers, journalists of all nations, destroyers of old states and architects of new, propagandists of the old order and spies of the new, lovely women of scandalous reputation, virtuous and sober citizens of Berne, delegates to international conferences, travellers to Paris held up on the way, connoisseurs of good beer—all found their way to this famous house of good cheer and joyous fellowship, and have helped Herr Rinner and the Gipsy Primas to make of it to thousands a memory of rich delight or of the haunting sorrow which is akin to joy.
When shall I see the Wiener Café again? I ask myself. And I know that I shall never see it as it was in those days of the war and the peace. All the old friends are gone. Even the gipsy band has fled. Perhaps there remain a few political exiles in Berne who find their way to the café occasionally. It may be that Dr. Ludwig Bauer, that amiable giant who eats at a sitting enough for four ordinary men and washes it down with incredible quantities of beer, calls occasionally to play a game of cards with a fellow-journalist, or to write his daily article in the little back room reserved for honoured and familiar guests. I do not know. All I know is that I have but to close my eyes and listen, and through the windows are wafted softly the strains from the gipsy band:
“Nimm Zigeuner deine Geige, lass sehn was du kannst,
Schwarzer Teufel spiel und zeige wie dein Bogen tanzt.”