CHAPTER IV
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CONFERENCE (MARCH 1919)
I have written a great deal about the annoyance and discomfort to which the traveller abroad was put in the days immediately following the Armistice; I have said nothing about the performance which had to be gone through before the journey could actually be begun. Some day sanity will be restored to the government of these affairs; but as a matter of purely historic interest a record of this business will be very amusing.
The Executive Committee of the Union of Democratic Control (of Foreign Politics) was holding its weekly meeting, when a letter arrived from Dr. de Jong van Beek en Donk, the secretary of the Dutch Peace Society, inviting the Union to send delegates to the League of Nations Conference which it was proposed to hold in Berne early in March, 1919. It was strongly felt that no opportunity of forming international connexions should be missed. One member after another was pressed to go. Nobody but myself appeared to be free to do so. I had only just returned from Switzerland and the International. The journey home had been full of discouragement and fatigue. I was asked if I would very much mind the trouble and weariness of a second long journey soon. I said I had not the slightest objection to the journey, but that the thought of the passport business was rather daunting. It was agreed that someone in the office should do all that for me, and on that understanding I agreed to go.
But the condition was not fulfilled. It could not be. Passport formalities are personal matters and only in the rarest circumstances can they be gone through by proxy. I had immediately to set about the task myself, and a terrific task it was. The date was already February 27. The Conference was timed to begin on March 3. Two days of that time I knew would be consumed in the journey itself. That left two for the business of preparation. I knew no human being at that time who had accomplished this in less than a week. Generally three weeks was looked upon as a fairly satisfactory minimum of time for this work.
The following was the routine for a would-be traveller to Switzerland in the early days of 1919.
To get a passport you filled in a long form requiring answers to all sorts of impertinent questions about yourself and your immediate ancestors, including offensive queries about your personal appearance! You had to attach to the form a photograph of a particular sort and size. This had to be endorsed, and your passport signed by a magistrate or some other worthy person who knew you, and who would guarantee your character and the truthfulness of your replies. Two other persons of recognized social position and personal rectitude had to permit the use of their names as guarantors. You handed the completed passport form to the clerk at the passport office, and were generally told to call again in three or four days. The urgency of my case inspired me to enclose a letter to the chief passport officer in the fond hope of considerate treatment; which to my surprise was granted to me. I remember that my appeal fell into the hands of an extremely considerate and courteous official.
If you were prepared to wait on the chance that your business would come soon, you were given a number which was called out in its turn. By sitting incredible hours without food, unless you were wise enough to bring sandwiches, it was just possible that your number might be called unexpectedly and your business gone through quickly. Most people grew impatient, or could spare only an hour or two and left. They had to take a new number and a similar chance next day; with probably similar ill-luck. It was of the first importance to “stick it out.” Then when the magic number you held was called, you paid your fee of five shillings and went your way.
After you received your passport you proceeded to the Swiss Legation for a visum. You had to fill in two forms here and attach a photograph to each of them. You were required to sign a paper stating you were not a Bolshevik, and had no dealings with them. You were obliged to provide a letter from the organization on whose business you were travelling. On the occasion of my third application I had to bring a certificate of health and a banker’s letter stating that I was a person of substance not likely to become a charge on the Swiss Exchequer! Another five shillings and the visum became yours.
The next business was a British Military permit. This, I think, you had for nothing. But you filled in two more forms, attached two more photographs and waited long, weary hours for the calling of your number before you got it. I waited five hours on this occasion, and stood the whole of the time!
Lastly there was the Military Permit from the French to be obtained by suffering the same ghastly torments. For this eight shillings was the market price!
I regard it as one of the exploits of my life that I got through all this disgusting business in two days. I could not have done it but for the good fortune that threw me into the hands of considerate officials and for my own British pertinacity. As it was I came out of the French office in Bedford Square only five minutes before the office closed!
So I started by the usual early morning train to Folkestone, tired but triumphant, and feeling that the nuisances ahead of me, calculated to ruin more tempers and create more racial antagonisms than half a century of war, were light by comparison with that whirling rush from photographer to guarantor, from guarantor to passport office, from passport office to doctor, from doctor to banker, from banker to Legation, from Legation to Permit offices, with the endless filling of forms and the interminable aching hours of waiting which I had endured before the journey could begin.
It was a madwoman’s rush across sea and land. The Paris train was nearly two hours late. The Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon are on opposite sides of Paris. The wildest scrimmage for taxis took place. My lucky star being still in the ascendant, I secured one, hurled myself across Paris like a lunatic and, like a maniac, tossed myself and my bag into the Belgarde portion of the Geneva express as the train was actually signalled to leave!
There was no empty seat in the whole of the train. I had a first-class ticket, but I passed the night in the corridor sitting on the end of my suit-case. French trains are always super-heated. There had been no time for food in Paris. Hunger, thirst and sleeplessness made that night memorable to me. And as I have already shown, Geneva was not the end. There was the long wait in the city and the seven hours’ journey to Berne to follow the sleepless night from Paris to Belgarde. But it is marvellous what can be done and endured if one is only determined enough. I drove up to the Belle Vue Hotel at 11 o’clock on the evening of March 2; and the Conference was due to begin the following morning. My two fellow delegates of the Peace Council were still in London, although they began the passport business days before I knew that I was to be a delegate; but they yielded to the fatal temptation to leave after waiting for a short time, returning at intervals to the office, instead of seeing the thing through.
I had been in my room just long enough to turn the key in the lock when the telephone bell rang vigorously: “Hallo, Mrs. Snowden!” came the cheerful voice of a friend. “I have just seen your name in the hotel register. But this is wonderful! Come and have coffee at the Vienna Café.”
“Thank you, no,” I replied. “I’m almost dead with fatigue. If anybody tries to keep me out of bed for five minutes, I’ll denounce him to the police as a Bolshevik spy! I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.” Swiss beds are soft and white and very comfortable. In ten minutes I was snugly curled up in one of the best of them, for the first and only time in my life grateful for the Continental habit of unpunctuality. “That Conference is timed to begin at ten, but I am quite sure it will be eleven,” was the last muttered thought as I fell soundly asleep.
The sun was streaming in at the window when I awoke the next morning. I sprang out of bed and pulled back the curtain. Thick snow lay on the ground and reflected dazzlingly the light from the sun. The sky was a bright blue and without a cloud. Again the telephone bell rang. “There are two young ladies to see you, madam. Shall I ask them to wait?” asked the hotel clerk. “No, send them up—and the coffee,” I said, scrambling back into bed and wondering who on earth it could be. Two minutes later there followed the waiter into the room two pale girls about twenty years of age with soft, shy manners.
“We have come to give you a welcome to the Conference and to ask you if you will be good enough to speak at the opening session. Dear Mrs. Snowden, we know how tired you must be, but it is so wonderful that you are here. Do please come and say a few words of greeting to us. It will make us so happy and we are very miserable.” They were starved girls from Munich.
“Of course,” I said. “If you will leave me now, I will be with you in half an hour.” And they left looking very pleased.
This Conference was not so large as the International. There were several of the Socialists present; but, generally speaking, the Congress was different in its personnel and in the character of those present. It was more bourgeois in appearance. I do not say that with the intention of reflecting upon its quality in any offensive way. I have not the hatred of the bourgeois because he is a bourgeois, which animates some Socialists. I am not sure, indeed, what the word means precisely in the mouths of some people I know. As used by many it appears to mean a man who wears a clean collar and cuts his hair short; or a woman who speaks in a soft voice and wears a pretty dress. With such persons, educated manners, courtesy in debate, destroy a Socialist’s bona fides; whilst well-cut finger nails and a pair of white cuffs positively mark him down as a “social traitor.” I am not joking. I am stating a literal fact. With these solemn idiots the bourgeois is a man who keeps his family respectable and goes to church on Sunday. He is a man who retains some affection for the old-fashioned virtues of industry and thrift. There is, for them, a bourgeois morality, a bourgeois mentality, a bourgeois faith. Radek writes of the necessity of destroying the bourgeois institutions of religion, the family and private property. Lenin jeers at the bourgeois idea of liberty. To be middle-class is to be bourgeois, even if you have to work hard for a living. To take a pride in clean table-linen is bourgeois. To delight in a daily bath is bourgeois. And to be bourgeois is to be condemned by this class of “superior” person in Socialist circles. It is all so very silly—and so very young!
The delegates to the League of Nations Conference were in the main professional people, lawyers, professors, doctors, teachers, journalists. One or two were aristocratically connected—Count Max Montgelas, for instance—and there were two or three generals. But the same features marked this Conference as the other. The German and the Austrian delegates looked hungry and ill-nourished. All that I have said of the German Socialists—the dry grey skin stretched tightly over the bones, the bloodshot eyes, the pale lips, the thin nervous hands—was true of the men and women who confronted me as I spoke on that glorious March morning. It was a very pitiful sight and told eloquently of what the German people had had to endure up to the time their rulers fled before the indignant revolutionaries.
I was very happy to have arrived in time to give the greetings from the two organizations I represented, the National Peace Council and the Union of Democratic Control, and to be able to promise them the presence in a few days of my two colleagues, Miss Joan Fry and Mrs. Charles Roden Buxton.
Miss Joan Fry is one of the daughters of the late Sir Edward Fry. She is an active member of the Society of Friends. She came to the Conference to testify to her foreign friends of the same religious persuasion as herself the solidarity with themselves of the like-minded women and men of Great Britain. She made several speeches of deep spiritual power which were well received by the delegates.
Mrs. Charles Roden Buxton, the daughter of the late Professor Jebb, is also a Quaker. She has two very lovely children whom she adores, and the knowledge of Europe’s suffering children moved her to come to Berne, not only to attend the Conference, but to see what might be done immediately to send aid to the little sufferers in Vienna. During the weeks we were in Switzerland, she and I (but chiefly she) did what we could to start an international organization for child relief. It was a difficult piece of work. The Swiss were apt to be afraid of doing anything which would seem to violate the principle of neutrality, although I am sure they never faltered in their desire to help. The Austrians were incapable, through suffering, of very energetic co-operation. The French were intransigeant at the time. Also, it was very difficult to avoid falling into the hands of the selfish and unscrupulous, never deterred from their habit of exploitation by the thought of the poor people they were robbing. We were warned of this man and that woman. This man was buying in a certain expensive market for reasons of his own; that woman was taking a fat commission for securing contracts for goods to be bought with our funds!
The Vienna children were dying for lack of fats. Mrs. Buxton determined to send them a truck load of cod-liver oil at once, preserved milk and milk chocolate to follow. She pledged the greater part of her private fortune in order that its going might be expedited. It is almost inconceivable how many difficulties were placed in the way of its going by the authorities, in spite of the generous act of Mrs. Buxton which satisfied the business interests. Endless delays for no obvious reason; endless calls on dilatory officials; endless pleadings with suspicious legations; endless regulations to be subscribed to, and finally the probability that it would never arrive at its destination. A military guard had to be provided to go with the train. Incredible though it may seem, at that time, and even now, not only goods travelling by train but whole trucks, down to the wheels and the buffers, have entirely vanished during transit, and not a rivet or a plank has been traced. How it is done is a matter of wild conjecture. But no valuable stores were ever sent by train in that part of Europe without a strong military guard.
Out of Mrs. Buxton’s noble efforts in Switzerland and those of her devoted sister in England, Miss Eglantyne Jebb, has evolved the Save the Children Fund, the British branch of which alone under the chairmanship of Lord Weardale has, since its inception, raised nearly one million pounds of English money for the relief of child-life in the famine areas of Europe. The fund does not itself administer, but allots to Relief Organizations already in existence if satisfied with their work and their workers. Its great hope and desire is to continue in existence after the pressing needs created by the war have been met; to unite, not only in this country but all over the world, so as to prevent waste and overlapping and to get the maximum of efficiency out of the workers, the organizations of all kinds connected with the nurture and protection of children in all lands. I am neither a prophet nor the child of a prophet, but I venture to think that when the history of these times comes to be written, the work of the Save the Children Fund will be regarded as one of the redeeming features of a situation otherwise black and wellnigh hopeless.
The other bright gleam on the dark sky-line of European politics in these years will be the Society of Friends. The Quakers have done infinite things for the relief of distress in Europe. A gallant young soldier told me of the strength he received whenever he saw set up on a hut somewhere in France, “Société des Amis.” In every big city and in countless little villages of Europe their work has been quietly and persistently carried on, without noise and self-advertisement, with no looking for praise, and no expectation of reward. It began with the war. It has been carried on during the peace. Many workers have died of their labours, poisoned with typhus germs or collapsed from overwork. Hundreds of thousands of sufferers will live to bless them, who would have died but for their work. Countless little children have been saved alive or preserved from stunted manhood or womanhood through them. Their selfless devotion has softened the cruel impressions made by the war. Their presence amongst the defeated has saved from utter hate and despair many of those who pictured the foe to themselves as wholly given up to revenge. To the Friends must be given the credit for the preservation of such little faith and idealism as may still be left in Europe.
The purpose of this Conference as of the other was the creation of machinery which should aid in the preservation of international peace. It was met to give support in particular to the League of Nations idea. It sought to suggest such points for the Charter issued from Paris as would make of the League of Nations a real and vital thing. Without going into the discussions at great length it may be briefly stated that the Conference recommended the inclusion of all nations within the League, all-round disarmament consistent with the preservation of internal order, and a thoroughly democratic organization. The Peace had not yet been concluded, so that the delegates were not influenced in their conclusions by the astounding deviations from the Fourteen Points which that peace was so soon to reveal. They were in the mood of wishing to join all nations in an effort to put together the pieces of a broken and suffering Europe. And they believed in President Wilson.
One of the most interesting personalities at this Conference was Professor Brentano of Munich, the famous political economist. I was coming down the stairs leading from the conference hall to the street when a handsome old man with white hair and a keen face stopped and addressed me. He had a nervous and slightly deprecating manner, stooped a little, and showed pitiful signs of under-nourishment in his pale face and rather tearful red eyes. He found it difficult to speak without emotion of the condition of things in Bavaria, and his voice trembled as he told of the nerve-strain under which the population lived, partly through anxiety about food and partly through fear of revolutionary disorders. His very obviously democratic sympathies did not reach quite so far as the Communist regime and the amiable but incompetent President Eisner. He told me that nobody who had food in the house, however small in amount or poor in quality, went to bed without feeling that his throat might be cut in the night by men mad with hunger, who knew about the little store. He showed me a scientific chart exhibiting in figures and curved lines the appalling tragedy of starving and dying children in his city, the city of soft church bells and beautiful pictures, of glorious music and fine dramatic art. It was a Munich girl of eighteen who told me her painful story of an elderly and unscrupulous admirer, who endeavoured to buy her with food, a common experience in the stricken lands.
“I will give you two fresh eggs every day if you will be my ‘friend’,” he said (it was the first time I had heard the word “friend” used in such a sense). “I did not know that it was possible to be tempted to so dreadful a thing by anything in the world,” said this poor thing, her pale cheeks flushing as she spoke, “but we are all so hungry and my mother is a sick woman. The eggs would have been very good for her. And an egg costs many, many marks with us.” Her lip quivered and she played nervously with the edge of her shawl. “But my Socialist faith kept me pure. I could never have borne all the misery and hunger; I should have drowned myself but for my belief that Socialism would do away with war and bring a better day for us all.”
The young Socialist Toller, who spoke out bravely for the young people in the Movement at the International, talked to me with the same bright hope in his shining eyes. Two or three months later he was sentenced to four years’ detention in a fortress for leading the Red Guards in a revolt against the Whites. I had talked with him long about the need for peacemakers in our Movement, and then he was a sincere and unqualified pacifist. His Red Guard exploit puzzled me; but it was explained to me that he had hoped to restrain the Red troops from committing excesses if he went with them, and that he did not actively provoke a violent attack. His release should be imminent—if he is not already free.
One of the most distinguished of German pacifists who attended this Conference was Professor A. W. Förster. Dr. Förster published a letter or manifesto during the war which made some of us wonder if he were the only Christian left in Europe, so brave and strong and unequivocal was it! He was for some years professor at the University of Munich; but during the war his pacifist attitude enraged the nationalist students and members of the Faculty. His lectures were continually interrupted by the demonstrations of these students, and the atmosphere of study made utterly impossible. He was therefore induced to take a year’s holiday on full pay, and retired to Switzerland to continue his pacifist activities there. One cannot help contrasting this treatment of its distinguished pacifist citizen by Bavaria with the treatment accorded to the Hon. Bertrand Russell by the British Government. Six months in prison for one of the greatest intellects that ever a country possessed for a sentence in a magazine article which offended them! It was an act which invited and excited the derision of the whole world of letters.
After the Bavarian Revolution, Professor Förster was made Minister to Switzerland under Kurt Eisner. His relations with his chief were very peculiar. These two men were equally firm and uncompromising in their pacifism, but in their political policy they differed. Eisner, like most Germans, favoured the union of Austria with Germany provided the Austrians themselves desired it. Förster was opposed to such a union. In articles, interviews and speeches he fought against the idea, and the people of Switzerland enjoyed the peculiar spectacle of the Prime Minister of a German State and his Minister taking opposite sides on one of the most important issues of foreign policy then exciting the interest of nations! Any other Prime Minister would have recalled Professor Förster. Any other Minister would have resigned. In spite of many remonstrances received, Eisner declined to dismiss his Minister. His worship of free speech was so great that he forgot all about the common sense of politics, which requires that the representative in a foreign country of any state should either support the policy of his Government or be deposed. Malicious critics saw nothing but duplicity in the extraordinary situation. They loudly and cynically averred that the two men were marching along two different roads to the same end; that there was a good deal of pretence about the business intended to deceive the general public and conceal their real design; that they were secretly hand in glove with one another. But it was not so. It was sincere comedy sincerely played by players who did not mean to be funny. It was one more demonstration of the effect of the supersession of government by the debating society, and of action by talk. I have the evidence of my own eyes and ears of the enthralling power of Dr. Förster’s eloquence upon the young men of Berne and of the captivating charm of Kurt Eisner’s theorizing oratory upon the delegates of a great Conference; but theories do not quell mutinies and dogmas do not deter the oppressor; and if ever there were a time when Bavaria (and Europe) stood in need of practical common-sense politics it was during the years succeeding the war and the revolutions.
I made one other friend from the city of Munich. There stepped into the lift in the Belle Vue Hotel one day, a tall, slender woman dressed in deep black who thanked me for something, I don’t know what, and began then and there a friendship I very deeply prize. Annette Kolb is said to have in her veins the blood of Bavarian kings. I know nothing about that. I only know there are few women of my acquaintance who have so much charm of personality as Miss Kolb. She is kind and tactful and of an extraordinary wit. In a dreary wilderness of men and women without humour she shot sparks of the divine fire and kept us from the deadly peril of unutterable boredom on many a weary occasion.
Annette is the child of a French mother and a German father. She is the perfect type of “one between the races.” To say that her soul is torn is no flippant use of serious language. It is written in her face. Her emotions ebb and flow. When France was down she was pro-French; now that Germany is out, she is probably pro-German. She wants a union in friendship of the two. She speaks continually of this. It is the great theme of her writings. She had rough treatment in Dresden when making a protest in public against the malignant lying of a certain section of the Press. Her book, “Briefe einer Deutsch-Französin” (Letters of a German-French), created a great stir in France and for a time was prohibited in Germany. She is a woman of most brilliant gifts. The intimate friend of Busoni, she is a first-rate musician herself. The friend also of the German poet Schickele she has a just appreciation of good verse, and writes well. She speaks several languages with the fluency of her native tongue, and her English is a model for many an Englishman.
There was one name on the list of delegates which attracted my special interest, Andreas Latzko, the author of the book which caused such a world-wide sensation, “Men in Battle.”
“What is Latzko like?” I asked a friend.
“Latzko is a pacifist monkey of Hungarian birth,” replied this complimentary individual. Latzko is small and dark and vain. He makes fiery speeches with nothing much in them except emotion. I should say his experiences in the trenches have seriously impaired his constitution and his nerve. He gives the impression of being neurotic and erratic. He is very self-absorbed. I must tell of a curious experience which befel, illustrative of Latzko’s temperament and character. A friend and I were supping at the hotel where he lodged. Presently came a message from Latzko’s son begging that we would call and see his father. He was seriously ill in bed. “Will you go?” asked my friend. “By all means when he is so ill. He must have something very serious to say,” was my reply. My companion smiled sardonically, but sent the boy with a message to say we would come up in half an hour. When we arrived we found the poor little man sitting up in bed, propped with pillows and making a great moan in a weak, strained voice. He thanked us effusively for coming, gasping as he spoke. I thought he must be dying. He spoke of his wife as of one who would soon be left to struggle with the wicked world alone. He showed us her photograph. She was away in Hungary. He was longing to see her. Then he came to the real business of the occasion. Would I call and see his publisher in England and find out why the royalties were not forthcoming. My companion grinned again.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked, rather puzzled, as we descended the stairs. “I am laughing at an amusing farce just played,” he said. “At supper you sat with your back to the hotel entry. I saw Latzko enter during our meal, look in at the glass door furtively, recognize us, and rush upstairs to prepare for his part. The rest you know.”
“Then he is not ill,” I said disgustedly, thinking of the pillow I had smoothed, and the tenderness I had wasted.
“Oh yes, he is ill, very ill; but not in the way you think,” was the slow reply. “He is sick of self-love.”
One more interesting delegate at this Conference comes to my remembrance, Professor Nicolai, a slight, fair man with hair pushed back over a large forehead, and a thin, small chin. He presented rather a limp appearance, doubtless due in part to under-feeding, but a little also to the radical idealist’s too-frequent inattention to matters of the toilet. His collar had a greyish look and his cuffs were not there!
Dr. Nicolai enjoys the distinction of being the first person to establish the war against war on a scientific basis. His “Biology of War” is an arresting and most valuable contribution to the literature of the movement. During the war he was constantly coming into collision with the German authorities for his pacifist utterances. He was several times tried for his offences, sentenced to prison, retried and tried again. The Government never actually imprisoned him. Such cases as his and Dr. Förster’s are worthy of note for two reasons. There are many people in England who believe that no voice was raised against the war and the war policy of the German Government by Germans in Germany during the war. This is demonstrated untrue. Then the comparatively mild treatment by the German authorities of their pacifist professors is interesting in view of the reputed intolerance of the German war-lords for those not of their own political breed. In 1918 Dr. Nicolai escaped to Denmark in an aeroplane, but is now back in his chair at the University of Berlin. There he is the centre of vicious attacks by reactionary professors, who pit against his new, their old, hoping the turn of the wheel will bring back the old order to the Fatherland.
The Conference and its several Commissions sat for three weeks. There were many occasions for social intercourse between the various sessions. The hotel was packed with interesting personalities. In view of his elevated position as Prime Minister of Hungary, I recall with interest my meeting with Count Teleki. He was presented to me as a moderate Socialist. It all depends upon definition. At that time the Bolsheviks were in power in Hungary. By comparison with Bela Kun I imagine Count Teleki sincerely believed himself a moderate Socialist. Or perhaps I took seriously what was intended for a joke. Perhaps it was one of those insincerities of speech, uttered to please and without the slightest regard to the truth, I found so common in the nationals of Latin and Balkan countries. Count Teleki’s present behaviour suggests the aristocratic reactionary rather than the Socialist. He is said to have aided Kaiser Karl in his ill-timed escapade. But in the Hôtel Belle Vue at the brilliant dinner table he was the charming, cynical, cultivated friend of political saint and sinner alike; a scientist in exile; a professor without a chair; a patriot without a country; a good fellow and a jolly companion. He is a man of moderate height, with thin features and a clean-shaven face. He is not unlike Mr. Bertrand Russell in appearance, and is probably not more than forty years of age. From my conversation with him I cannot imagine for a moment that he is in sympathy with the action of the Hungarian extremists, who have instituted a “White Terror” worse than the Red since the fall of Bela Kun and his associates. And I think it only fair in this connexion to say that every Hungarian with whom I spoke in Berne agreed that Bela Kun himself was no sympathizer with the behaviour of his own extremists. He suffered the common fate of rulers tossed up by violent revolutions—the poisonous association of worse and stronger men than himself.
There was presented to me one day in the lobby of the hotel a tall thin man with laughing eyes and an engaging boyish manner, who had just challenged Fate by dashing at break-neck speed from Geneva to Berne in a powerful motor-car. His English was halting but perfectly intelligible, and he had a way of insinuating himself into the regard of a stranger which reminded one of the wiles of the “White-headed Boy.” It was Prince Ludwig Windischgraetz, the Winston Churchill of Hungary; the gay, irresponsible hero of a thousand romances, military, political and human. He is only thirty-eight years of age, but he has had a very full life, and has held positions of great responsibility in his country’s public life. At the time of the Conference in Budapest of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies he was one of the distinguished champions of votes for women. He was very much concerned that I should understand that he was a sincere democrat. I remember with some amusement at a lunch, where he and his wife, Mr. Rudolf Kommer and myself formed the party, taking his side most heartily in a hot discussion on the relative value of autocracy and democracy. He, the kinsman of kings, was all for democracy. Who was against it must be inferred. But the Prince was very much in earnest.
His memoirs, which are to be published in English very soon, will be interesting reading if they are anything like complete, for the adventures of this temperamental romanticist, this gallant and not too discreet patriot, this reckless and warm-hearted young aristocrat have been many and varied. Recklessness in politics is a dangerous thing; but Prince Windischgraetz has the personality which reminds one how mean a thing discretion can be. I have not the slightest doubt in my own mind that Prince Ludwig Windischgraetz was the prime instigator and organizer of the Kaiser Karl exploit.
But the Prince’s greatest romance is surely his wife. Princess Maria Windischgraetz is one of the loveliest women I have ever seen. Her beauty is of the English type: fair skin, golden hair and blue eyes. She is one of the few women outside feminist and Socialist circles I met on the Continent whose gaze is frank, and who leaves the impression of a decent attitude towards men. I wearied of it almost before I understood the sex-game as it is played in the cosmopolitan cities of Europe (doubtless of this country also). The insolent, sidelong look, the provocative dress, the tasteless conversation and gross manners of the women habituées of fashionable cafés and big continental hotels are a weariness of the flesh to the self-respecting. A relief it was after the hectic atmosphere of the hotel reception-rooms to meet this sweet Hungarian mother of five beautiful children who looks like a girl, and hear her unaffected talk about her home and her country. She very modestly claimed no understanding of politics; but had she had the power she knew enough and felt rightly enough to have saved her country from the pit into which politicians with more experience but less common sense had let it fall.
We met several times, each occasion happier than the last. From entirely different worlds, I think she would agree that we understood each other and held many ideas in common. I remember one meeting with peculiar tenderness. We were the guests of Mr. Rudolf Kommer on the Gurten-külm. After dinner we walked through the trees to see the moonlight on the Bernese Alps. I tried to comfort her with prophecies that all would be well with Hungary one day if Hungary did not lose faith in herself. “And when that day comes, do not, I beg of you, copy the methods you deplore in the Bolsheviks, establishing a White Terror instead of a Red. Someone has got to take a stand against the iniquities and cruelties of terrorism. Let those to whom more has been given do that, the educated, the rich, the aristocratic.”
I do not know what part, if any, Princess Maria has played in the recent politics of Hungary. Her estates have been restored to her; her country is hers once more. Whether or not she approved of the insane policy which has treated simple Trade Unionists and Co-operators as Bolsheviks, and still strikes discriminating blows at the poor Jews, I am not able to say. Probably not. But she said to me when I begged her to take up the cause of women in Hungary: “I have five children to care for and a husband to look after. I have little time for politics.”
Princess Maritza von Liechtenstein is another beautiful blonde who was living in Berne at the time of the Conference. She is stronger looking than Princess Windischgraetz, and more vigorous and active. Her English is amazingly perfect. She is the daughter of Count Geza Andrassy, the Hungarian patriot, and the mother of five or six handsome boys. She bitterly blamed Count Karolyi for having let loose the flood of Bolshevism upon Hungary, especially criticizing his land policy and the break up of the big estates. She evinced considerable interest in English politics. So did her distinguished uncle. Both confessed to a real liking for England which I believe was quite genuine. Count Andrassy appeared much broken by his country’s afflictions. In appearance he struck me as a refined edition of Thomas Carlyle in his later years. He has grey hair with touches of white, a square forehead, shaggy eyebrows, clear-cut features, a slightly stooping figure. A striking resemblance to my own father attracted me. He walked about the hotel full, as one could see, of grave preoccupation: not too occupied to save a woman from a mistake! I was taking tea with him and one other when the concierge brought to me a note from a man who claimed a mutual friendship with a highly respected friend of my own. This man in his wife’s name invited me to his home. I had never heard of the man. I read the name aloud. Count Andrassy suggested that I would be wise to decline the invitation, which I did. I afterwards discovered how right he was!
Prince Johann von Liechtenstein, the father of the six splendid boys, is a tall, grave, elegant man with blue eyes, black-fringed, and a reserved and earnest manner. Soft and slow of speech, without a trace of self-assertiveness, he made a friend of all with whom he came into contact.
Before leaving Berne I paid a visit of investigation to a camp for hungry Austrian children at Frutigen, on the invitation of Baroness von Einam, who ran the camp. This extraordinary woman collected incredible sums of money and organized this camp whilst other people were busy thinking about it. There in the Swiss mountains for seven weeks each, five or six hundred starving little Austrians lived. They were housed in the smaller hotels. Their teachers came with them. The villagers told us in answer to our questions that when the children first came nobody knew they were there, they crept about so languidly and quietly. The second week they began to sing and run about. The third week they tore the air with their happy yells. When we saw them they were about to go home. They looked rosy and brown and jolly. They had played in the fields all the morning. For us they were going to sing and dance. Their costumes were of paper, but very prettily made. And they went through their exercises with great grace and beauty. One incident only marred the day’s proceedings. A little girl had written to Vienna complaining that her teacher ate all her food. She was brought before Baroness Einam. The teacher, a red-faced girl of over-fed appearance, feeling herself wronged, rushed at the pale child as if to strangle her. The girl was stubborn and refused to make amends. What was done to the little Bolshevik I don’t know. But it was gratifying to the organizers of the scheme, and very interesting to us to discover that the kindly Swiss peasants grew so attached to the little Austrians that when the time came for them to go home they offered to keep them all until the next Austrian harvest.
We drove home through the lovely Swiss scenery in the cool evening air. But what obtrudes on the mind to spoil the memory of that drive? The six luckless idiots, with vacant faces and staring eyes, the disfiguring goitre thickening their poor throats, we counted on the roadside before we were out of sight of the little mountain town.