CHAPTER V
THE CONFERENCE OF WOMEN AT ZURICH (JUNE, 1919)
The Women’s International League for Permanent Peace came into existence during the war. It was founded by that section of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies which withdrew from the parent organization because it felt that the attitude of the Union to the war was compromising too seriously the reputation of its members for clear and calm thinking and constructive enterprise. Neutrality for an individual on questions related to the war was very difficult; for an organization it proved impossible. The educated women of the great women’s Union were quite unable to agree to differ on such matters as the causes and conduct and remedy for this and all wars. Some had to resign. The pacifists did so and formed their own organization. They included many of the best and most devoted workers for women’s causes in the country, such as Councillor Margaret Ashton and Miss Maude Royden. The broad line of division between these two sets of equally able women, now happily friends again, was nationalistic. “My country, right or wrong,” and “Let us get down to root causes,” are probably the phrases that represented fairly the different lines of action. Although in the Women’s International League there were many who believed with the others that right in this conflict lay wholly with this country, they differed in believing that the war should not be pursued to the knock-out blow, but should be ended as speedily as possible by the peaceful method of negotiation, if that were possible. But it is only fair to say that in their ultimate hopes and desires for permanent peace the two organizations do not differ by so much as a hair’s breadth.
The Women’s International League held its first Conference at the Hague in April of 1915. Immense difficulties blocked the way to the holding of this Conference. The British Government obstinately withheld passports till the last moment. These were finally granted with extreme reluctance, and more than a hundred women from Great Britain prepared to attend. Many of them actually reached Tilbury, bag in hand, ready to step on board, when the news came that the Channel had been closed and the ship would not sail. Many women to this hour are convinced that the closing of the Channel was a deliberate act on the part of the Government to prevent those women attending the Conference. I am inclined to think that the reason given was the correct one, that there were naval engagements actually begun or feared, which absolutely necessitated the stoppage of ordinary traffic. It would be altogether too encouraging to believe that the activities of a few women had such power to determine the conduct of the Government at such a time; and too flattering to imagine that our influence was of such consequence that this indirect method of achieving its will must in wisdom be adopted by the Government.
Only two British women were present at the Conference, the two who had gone to the Hague some weeks before to help with the organization. Forty American women, including the chairman, Miss Jane Addams, crossed the Atlantic to attend. Both German and Belgian women were present, and women from several other European countries contrived to attend in spite of the difficulties of travel which beset them. The Conference accomplished nothing of a material character, but it gave moral courage to those who were there, and directed the thought and activity of thousands of women throughout the world at a time when most people were feeling too intensely to be able to think clearly.
Miss Jane Addams, the President of the Women’s International League, is a very remarkable international figure. She is a tiny woman of sweet Quaker aspect, with her hair parted in the middle and brushed smoothly back from her ears. She has large sad eyes which look as though the pain of living were too great to be borne, so acutely does her sensitive spirit react to the suffering and injustice in the world. Her dress is simple. Her manner is calm and dignified, but tender to the young and needy, inviting confidence but not frivolity. She is, notwithstanding the general seriousness of her manner, full of humour, and can laugh with the best at a piece of genuine fun. The first time I visited America I sought her at Hull House, Chicago, the chief monument to her life’s labours. “You must go and see the greatest man in America,” said John Burns to me just before I sailed. “You mean President Roosevelt?” I queried. “I mean Jane Addams,” he replied. “The greatest man in America is a woman.” There are those who think they pay the highest compliment to a woman who speak of her greatness as of that of a man. My friend Dr. Anna Shaw told me that she was once introduced to an audience as a “very great woman—a woman with the brain of a man.” The Rev. Anna rose with a mischievous smile twitching the corners of her mouth, and in a drawling voice began: “Before I can take that as a compliment, Mr. Chairman, I want to see the man whose brain I’ve got!”
Jane Addams is indeed great with her own woman’s greatness, great with the greatness of pure goodness and intense and loving sympathies joined to more than ordinary powers of organization. Hull House was the first great Settlement House in Chicago. It was meant primarily to minister to the social and intellectual needs of the crowds of immigrant citizens flowing continually into the city. It comprises club houses for both sexes and all ages, a restaurant, a hospital, a gymnasium, baths, workrooms, library—everything, in short, which is necessary to make life tolerable in a dreary neighbourhood devoid of any of the amenities and most of the decencies of ordinary civilization.
The district round Hull House is filled with Greeks, Italians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Lithuanians—a little Europe. Most of these people speak no English when they arrive. The young ones learn it quickly; the old ones slowly, or not at all. The young ones adopt American clothes, American manners, American slang; the old folk, particularly the women, keep as long as they can to their picturesque native dress. The young people turn up their noses at the old folk; the old people are lonely and miserable. Family life becomes threatened in many a home. Miss Addams noticed this. She established a workroom with primitive spinning wheels and weaving frames. She gathered the old people into this room to work at their native craft. She praised their work. She sold it for good prices. She brought rich citizens of Chicago to look at the work and admire it. The old people recovered their self-respect. The young people became subdued. Good feeling was restored and many a family made happy again. By such simple devices did Jane Addams make herself beloved of the poor and her international work of real account.
Miss Addams is, I am told, of Quaker ancestry, highly educated, and the friend of the élite of America. During the war she shared with others the pain of misunderstanding and abuse. I caught a glimpse of her suffering at the Kingsway Hall when she told of her work in Chicago in the early days of the war—five hundred bright Italian boys marching past Hull House to entrain for the war, followed by an equal number of young Bulgarians on the same errand, friends and brothers of the Settlement, soon to fall before one another’s fire in a war for which they were in no way responsible, and for reasons which they could not understand. Jane Addams’s mission of peace to many of the Courts of Europe was the outcome of a deep compassion for the young victims of war based upon experiences like this.
Her association with the peace ship was unfortunate, and her general attitude to the war caused her to suffer the unpopularity which all nonconformists must endure. But history will right her and them.
It was felt desirable after the Armistice to hold a second conference of the League in order to gather up the broken strands of international friendship and activity. During the League of Nations Conference in Berne a joint meeting of the women delegates and the officers of the Swiss branch of the Women’s International League was held to discuss the possibility of holding the Conference in Switzerland. The Swiss women were willing if the Swiss authorities would permit it and if help could be given them with the organization. I wired to Mrs. Swanwick, the British President, and satisfactory promises of help having been received, it was agreed that the Conference should be held in Zurich in June of 1919. All Europe was despairing of the Peace Treaty not yet published, and the delays were felt increasingly to be full of bad omen. Our Conference opened in brilliant sunshine amidst the gloomiest of fears.
Zurich is, like all Swiss cities, a model of bright cleanliness, its streets filled with flowers in the summer, its surroundings of wood and mountains a physical glory and a spiritual delight. And to add to it all there is the wonderful lake—truly a city for inspiration, if inspiration is anywhere to be felt in times like these.
I travelled in advance of my fellow-delegates, having preliminary business in Berne. During the previous Conference many lonely people, unable to reach their friends, had given me commissions in Paris and London, and I felt obliged to return to report the results. For example: I was writing a letter in the lounge of the Belle Vue Hotel when a beautiful little girl of twelve, with long fair hair and pink cheeks, came and spoke to me in perfect English. I was informed that she was a German child and that she enjoyed a distinguished name—von Kleist. I discovered later that she had a beautiful American mother, which accounted for her English, and that her father, Major von Kleist, was a prisoner of war in England. In reply to a wistful question I offered to see the father and convey greetings from the mother and child. The British authorities at home were as reasonable and generous as I have usually found them in all personal relationships, and I received permission to visit Major von Kleist in Skipton internment camp. He was glad to see someone who had so recently seen his wife and daughter, and who could testify from sight to their health and well-being.
On another occasion came two cultivated Jews from Czernowitz who had a mission to the Jewish Commissioners to the Paris Peace Conference. They could not get their visa and were in great trouble. The Zionist case would suffer if its supporters could not be heard. Would I help them by conveying their written statement to Paris? I knew Rabbi Wise, the Chief Commissioner, and engaged to take these papers to him. On reaching Paris I discovered that Rabbi Wise had returned to America, but delivered the document to his able substitute.
Then there were those who were working for the Siberian prisoners. Terrible stories were told of the sufferings of these wretched men—become nobody’s concern with the withdrawal of Russia from the war and the anarchy consequent upon the Revolution there. No fewer than a quarter of a million, chiefly Austrians and Hungarians, were left to starve and die in internment camps in conditions which beggar description. Some joined the Bolsheviks. Some escaped and died on the way home. Some were told to go, and fought, begged, stole their way to the Polish frontier, only to be told they could go no farther. A few, of a stronger breed, reached home in rags, to tell harrowing stories of incredible suffering. The Allies were petitioned to help with money and ships. They were begged to intercede with the Poles to allow the wretched men under proper control to cross the frontier. It was sought to get ships at Vladivostock to take them round the other way. The Hungarian Red Cross had a petition for President Wilson. Would I take it? I agreed to do so, and placed it in the hands of Colonel House. The men left alive have since been repatriated by the League of Nations, through the efforts of Dr. Nansen.
There were other and less important matters to report: The delivery of letters from Baron Szilassy and his sister to their friends in Huddersfield. Baron Szilassy was the newly appointed Hungarian Minister in Berne, and his sister is a fresh, good-natured girl, English in type. Both spoke excellent English.
So I travelled by Berne en route for Zurich, happy to be the bearer of many kind messages to lonely and miserable people. When I arrived in Zurich most of the British delegates had not arrived owing to passport troubles; but they appeared before the Conference began.
Mrs. Swanwick, the President of the British branch of the Women’s International League, is one of the most commanding personalities of the women’s movement. She is slender and fair, with a delightful boyish mop of pale gold hair which curls up at the ends, and sky blue eyes. She is a person of quite extraordinary intellectual power, a little lacking in tenderness to those of lesser calibre. She finds it extremely difficult to obey the scriptural injunction to “suffer fools gladly.” She is apt to take strong prejudices against people, which is annoying to herself, since it is inconsistent with her own standard of intellect and the conduct she demands of other people; but she has very good judgment in most affairs, and I should not be surprised to discover that in her prejudices she is generally right. Her courage, both physical and moral, is of the very first order and beyond all praise. She is very delicate and yet contrives to do the work of three people. And like many another, she staked everything except her self-respect when she took a public stand against the ignorant hatreds of the war. She is full of artistic appreciation, hates cant and humbug, and is devoted to practical things and persons. She is a very consistent and intrepid feminist, but happily devoid of the anti-man bias which is the mark of the feminist fool!
At the first session of the Conference, tender-hearted Isabella Ford flitted from one woman to another, busying herself in particular with the frail and underfed women from the ex-enemy lands, saying here and there the comforting helpful word to lonely souls inclined to a half-bitterness. There was one pathetic little creature from Vienna, since dead from privation, whose poor hands and face were a mass of festering sores left by the cold and under-nourishment of the previous winter. She was so happy to be there, and, like a little bird, hopped cheerily about the room, revelling in her reunion with old friends; but I heard privately that even in Switzerland, where food abounded, she was not getting enough to eat. The exchange told so heavily against her that practically all her money went to pay for her room and the morning coffee, and she was sitting all day without food. I engaged the interest of some of the more prosperous women, and believe that they were able by the exercise of tact to improve the circumstances of this brave little woman.
Isabella came to me the second morning with her eyes full of tears. “Dear Isabella, what is the matter?” I inquired. She showed me a telegram just received by her German neighbour announcing the death of her only daughter. “She is heart-broken,” said my friend. “She was an only child. And it was through hunger that the decline set in. She cannot speak to us this morning. And I do not wonder.”
Two ladies from Munich were the most vigorous speakers on the German side, and were immensely popular. One was Dr. Anita Augspurg, the other Fräulein L. G. Hyman. They live together in Munich, and were as inseparable at the Conference as the Siamese twins. Dr. Augspurg suggests a Franciscan monk in appearance. She wears her grey hair short. Her strong pleasant face has the expression of the religious fanatic whose conviction is founded upon reason, a rare phenomenon in any country, but a type frequently met in the Russian Socialist Movement. In addition, to help the illusion, she wears a severe and loose style of dress suggestive of the robe of a priest. She is kind austerity embodied, simple and dignified. Her intimate friend is more emotional, full of quick passion and, I should imagine, quicker prejudices. Like Dr. Augspurg she is a pacifist and an excellent advocate. Her voice is of masculine timbre, and she has a vigorous and compelling gesture. Both these ladies are extravagant anti-Prussians eager to secure for Bavaria its independence of Berlin. Their account of the revolution in Bavaria was intensely interesting and amusing, and perhaps a few words may be told here quite appropriately.
I have already mentioned Kurt Eisner, the long-haired delegate who met us at Berne railway station on our way to the International. Kurt Eisner was the leader of the Bavarian Revolution, and until his assassination was President-Prime Minister of the Bavarian Republic. For many years this very able Prussian Jew had been the dramatic critic of the German Socialist newspaper Vorwärts. He was a witty and brilliant writer, and was considered by æsthetic Berlin one of her greatest living authorities. Up to the time of the outbreak of war he had barely touched practical politics. His Socialism was the idealistic theorizing of the café habitué, or at best the philosophic conclusion of the amiable and able dreamer of dreams which ought to come true, but do not in a lifetime. When the war broke out he violently opposed the war policy of the German Government. His articles were censored; he was thrown into prison. He was living in Munich at this time. The downfall of the military power in Germany set him free. Having suffered for his faith, he was acclaimed by the leaderless Socialist Movement of Munich one of the martyrs of militarism and the predestined chief of the pacifist Socialist Movement of Bavaria.
The young intellectuals of Munich were yelling all the time “Down with militarism,” but nobody quite knew how it was to be “downed.” The idea occurred to Eisner to march to the palace with a dozen men and demand the abdication of the king. They carried with them a strongly worded manifesto expressing in beautiful language their fine ideals, and marched up to the door of the palace in truculent mood prepared for the worst, hoping for the best. The best was realized. The royal forces offered no resistance. All they asked was that the king might retire unmolested. This was granted. Eisner was set up in the king’s place, head of the new Republic. In a quarter of an hour, without the firing of a shot, the dynasty which had ruled for centuries was suspended, and a member of the despised race, a Jew, and a hated Prussian, was elevated in its stead.
It was a revolution made inevitable by the defeat of the militarists of Germany; but it might have been lasting if the militarists of the Allies had gone the same way. As it is, the peace has made that impossible. The present reaction in Bavaria, the general restoration in Central Europe of a belief in the power of the sword, is due to the revelation of the fact contained in the various Peace Treaties that the power of the sword is the power in which the Allies also trust. It would have been better for the revolution in Bavaria if Kurt Eisner had declined to be the symbol of the new order, for a Prime Minister of the race of the Jews was intolerable to aristocrat and peasant alike.
Kurt Eisner was not a politician, as I have already said. He was an artist in words. He was a Bohemian in habits. He loved to frequent the cafés. He could not in his new office drop at once the habits and interests of a lifetime. Infinitely illuminating of the man’s tastes and political judgment is his first act after taking office. It was the reorganization of the theatre of Munich! He was not able to keep separate the two sides of his life, the social and the political, as wiser men would have done. He mixed the beer and tobacco and gossip of the café with the work, organization and government of the council chamber. Many of his followers and helpers copied his ways. The young men who served him ought to have been allowed to continue playing billiards in the Café Stéfanie. Most of them were unfit for the great responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon them. Similar to the experience of Lenin and of most of the other Socialist leaders who had power suddenly thrust upon them was that of Kurt Eisner, who became the prey of revolution-profiteers, place-hunters, adventurers, insincere men and women who professed the new political creed as eagerly as they held the old. “This sort of thing,” said the great Lincoln solemnly, “will ultimately test the strength of our democratic institutions.” It has tainted their reputation already.
At the International Kurt Eisner was prime favourite with the French delegates because he was so bitter and unsparing in his attacks on Imperial Germany. He was not a great orator, but he impressed his audience with the passionate sincerity of every word he spoke. It was one of his speeches in Berne which was said to have determined his murderer, the young Count Arco, to kill him. It concerned the German prisoners of war who were then, four months after the war, still held back in France. Eisner tried to explain the French point of view in the matter. He was represented in Germany as having approved of it. It was felt to be intolerable. He was shot dead. And the shot made a martyr of a man, amiable, kind, gifted, slovenly in dress and habit, who had already outlived his usefulness to the Revolution and was about to resign, and who might have retired to some café and talked and smoked his life away to its happy and unimportant end. For me he is an interesting memory; but I have to confess to the faint lingering of a feeling of resentment, the feeling I have always been unable to conquer for that type of pacifist, to be found in every country, who tries to absorb for his own government the entire responsibility for the war.
It is impossible to name all the brilliant and capable women who attended this Conference. Amongst them was Miss Crystal Macmillan, tall and “bonny” and Scottish, the lawyer of the Conference, born to confound the illogical male; Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, vivacious, eloquent and warm; Frau Herzka of the mischievous smile and the everlasting cigarette; Mademoiselle Gobat, the gifted daughter of the renowned Swiss pacifist; Mademoiselle Melan from France, whose wonderful speech electrified the assembly and melted to tears the hardest pro-Ally and to softness the bitterest pro-German; and a host of others from the four corners of the earth, women whose names are household words in their respective countries. It was a good Conference, and gave direction to the thoughts and impulses of many who would otherwise have struggled in vain against the national psychology, and beaten their idealism to death against the almost indestructible barbed wires of national hates and prejudices.
During the sitting of the women’s Conference the Treaty of Versailles was published. The outrage upon the conscience of mankind which it revealed, and the stain upon the reputation of the Allies which it was, pledged to build upon fourteen fundamentals, every one of which was violated or ignored, stunned and stung the Conference into misery first and indignant protest afterwards. On the morning after the publication of the Treaty a unanimous declaration was made, proposed by myself, against the Treaty of Versailles. Lest the cynic should smile at the speed with which the Conference arrived at its conclusion on a matter which had occupied the Conference in Paris for seven months, I should like to point out two things. First, we had a clear idea in our minds of the essentials which the peace should contain. President Wilson and the British Prime Minister had helped us there. As for the elaborate clauses and fine details of the Treaty: more than one of the delegates had spent the best part of a day and the whole of a summer night digesting these for the morrow’s debate. As a matter of historic interest I insert the first public declaration against the Treaty by any body of people in the world.
“This International Congress of Women expresses its deep regret that the terms of peace proposed at Versailles should so seriously violate the principles upon which alone a just and lasting peace can be secured and which the democracies of the world had come to accept.
“By guaranteeing the fruits of the secret treaties to the conquerors, the terms of peace tacitly sanction secret diplomacy, deny the principle of self-determination, recognize the right of the victors to the spoils of war, and create all over Europe discords and animosities which can only lead to future wars.
“By the demand for the disarmament of one set of belligerents only the principle of justice is violated, and the rule of force is continued. By the financial and economic proposals a hundred million people of this generation in the heart of Europe are condemned to poverty, disease and despair which must result in the spread of hatred and anarchy within each nation.
“With a deep sense of responsibility this Congress strongly urges the Allied and Associated Governments to accept such amendments of the terms as shall bring the Peace into harmony with the principles first enumerated by President Wilson, upon the faithful carrying out of which the honour of the Allied peoples depends.”
I left the Conference that day in the company of one of the most brilliant of living Germans. He had never been optimistic about the Peace. He was more than half in sympathy with the militarist point of view although a sincere internationalist. It was not any fighting proclivity which had shaped his opinion. He hated violence for the vulgar, futile thing it is. But an inherited capacity for facing realities, and a cultivated habit of looking squarely at facts, led him to severe criticism of those he contemptuously spoke of as idealists. He was an idealist himself after a fashion; but his ideal was not of the complexion of that exemplified in the conference of women. He had no use for democracy. He spoke openly of the stupid, ignorant thing which, he alleged, most people really believe it to be if they were honest with themselves and the rest of the world. He differed from those who acknowledge frankly the weaknesses of democracy, but who, recognizing its inevitability, hope that with education and organization it need not to all eternity be the victim of the cunning and the corrupt. He believed democracy to be the predestined victim of power till the end of time. His ideal was the domination of mankind by a few great empires, commonwealths, call them what you will, British, German, Russian and American. The small nationalities he regarded as a nuisance. He was bitterly hostile to those British delegates who contemplated complacently the break-up of the British Empire. He would have applauded the dissertations of Dean Inge on “the squalid anarchy of democracy,” laughed to scorn the idea of an entirely independent India, Egypt, Ireland, and through all his pain at the destruction of the German Empire, pleaded for the preservation of that of Great Britain.
For the “strong men” of England he had the warmest admiration. To my astonishment, before I knew him properly, he expressed an equal regard for M. Clemenceau. “What!” I exclaimed, “the man who is doing his best to ruin Germany? Or, at least, to benefit France in such a way that only the ruin of Germany can result? You astonish me!”
“But why not?” he replied. “In Clemenceau there is a man who knows what he wants and means to get it; who looks for the attainable and means to attain it. When did you read from Clemenceau a speech full of delightful and impossible pledges and promises? Has Clemenceau disguised the real objects of this war under a cover of fine and deceptive phrases? All he cares about is France. He would stop at nothing to advance the interests of France. One can understand a point of view like that. It is cruel. It hurts Germany. Very well. That is sad for Germany; but, at least, with such a man we know where we are and what to expect. If that is nothing, it is better to expect nothing and get it than to expect much and be disappointed. Clemenceau knows that in strangling Germany he will satisfy the immediate demands of France. That is all he cares about. This is the present. The future is far away, indefinite. New events will shape and govern that. For the present it is France, only France, all the time France; and for the rest? N’importe! It is an intelligible point of view.”
There was a long pause during which I marvelled for the hundredth time at the amazing facility for languages of the cultivated European.
“It is not the Clemenceaus and the Ludendorffs of the world, but your Wilsons, your Lloyd Georges, your idiotic idealists who are bringing it to ruin.” He glanced at me to see if I were offended. “Please go on,” I murmured. “You interest me deeply.”
“Your idealists have promised the people impossible things, Wilson’s Fourteen Points, for instance, Lloyd George’s wonderful phrases, Asquith’s war-time speeches, the Russian manifestoes, numberless ministers of religion with no more knowledge of international politics than the Bibles they thump. They have told the stupid masses that this is a holy war; that the peace will be based upon justice: that nothing but good is intended the German people, if they will only get rid of their blood-stained Kaiser. The same sort of amiable idiots in Germany believe this sort of thing. All Germans, with the exception of a few so-called pan-Germans, are intoxicating themselves with the thought that liberty is born anew; that militarism is dead for ever; that with the new German democracy the Allied democracies will make a fair and democratic peace. Pathetically relying on the Fourteen Points, they are pre-figuring a glorious future for free Germany, its place in the sun assured according to plan, a member of the great Society of Nations which shall maintain the peace of the world. Poor deluded wretches! What an awakening there will be!”
All this was in Berne during the International.
We left the Zurich conference hall together and discovered a little café famous for its good tea and delicious pastries. Not a word did we speak for many minutes. I was filled with awe at the spectacle of his misery. The ordinarily smiling brown eyes were black with pain, the pain of a suffering dumb animal. He lit a cigarette. The silence continued. I felt like an intruder gazing in at the windows of a man’s stricken soul; but to retire would have been unsympathetic. So I stayed and poured out the tea and waited in silence for the speech that I hoped might come.
“How can you sit there looking so fresh and beautiful? How can the sun go on shining and the birds continue to sing when the world is really dark and black and sunk in rottenness?” was the beginning.
“You feel it more than you expected?” I asked, reminding him of the Berne conversation.
“It is so much worse than I expected. I did not expect much, God knows. But this thing—it means famine, anarchy, war in Europe for twenty, thirty, forty years!” I waited patiently.
“Germany is to pay the uttermost farthing for the damage she did to civilians, which is not unreasonable; an enormous amount of the war damage, of which I do not complain; but also incalculable sums for the mischief for which she is not responsible, or only in part, which is wrong. At the same time practically all the means by which she is to make the money are to be taken from her—ships, minerals, colonies. She is to be disarmed and her deadly enemy is to remain fully armed. Any fool can see where that will lead. And the worst is not told. The slow starvation of Germany, the lynch-pin of European civilization, will mean incredible moral decline and spiritual degradation. Millions of people will think food, talk food, dream food, steal food, lie for food, bribe, corrupt and even murder for food. What man would see his wife and children die of hunger whilst food was to be had? Masses of disbanded soldiers, for whom there will be no work, will enlist for adventures, will quarrel, fight and kill, either for subsistence or in the service of the enemies of their country, having no choice, if they are to live. The new states will be insolent, ambitious, tyrannical, unscrupulous. Instead of one big war there will be twenty little ones—war never ceasing, war for crude material things. Art, music, literature, the drama—these will decay. First class artists will go to America where they can be paid. Grass will grow in decayed cities and ignorant peasants will instal themselves in the seats of power. We shall have restored the age of bigotry and superstition. Central Europe will not merely be Balkanized; it will be atomized. Our horizon will decline to the level of each man’s immediate family, if he has a conscience. He will have no horizon but himself if he has none. And as for your ideals”—here he paused—“the failure of Wilson has made faith in them impossible to revive for decades, if ever again. Faith in the pledged word of public men, faith in idealism, faith in religion—this is dying or dead. And our idealists have killed it, not the men who never professed more than the crudest material objectives in this war. Wilson and Lloyd George between them have damaged the world’s moral currency infinitely more than the Treaty of Peace has damaged the financial currency of Germany; and the world is poorer by the loss of the one than of the other, grave though that is.”
As the passionate words fell from his lips I felt humiliated to the very dust for the failure that I felt myself to embody. Weeping in a public place is not a habit of mine or I might have wept. But if my friend saw no tears, he must have felt the sympathy, for as we rose to go to the University he said:
“But justice and sanity owe much to you. I am grateful for your speech of this morning. It will have no effect. It will accomplish nothing. But it is good to know there are some with the courage to speak what they believe even when it is on behalf of a beaten foe. And the German women will be grateful for your protest against the blockade.”
One of the most interesting of the public meetings in connexion with this Conference was held in an immense church, like a great cathedral for size and proportions. One of the speakers on this occasion was a mulatto woman who addressed the gathering in excellent German. Very suitably she pleaded the cause of her race and the importance of a world at peace for the development along right lines of the black man and woman.
At the foot of the pulpit from which we spoke was an invalid chair in which was seated a pale, scholarly looking man with a refined and earnest face. He listened with the keenest attention to the speeches and obviously understood all the languages employed on this occasion. Nobody could fail to be arrested by the personality of this intense listener. The question as to who he was flew from one to another. He was Prince Alexander Hohenlohe, often spoken of as the “Red Prince” on account of his radical views on many subjects. The next day I received a complimentary letter from him and an invitation to tea, which I accepted. I found him seated under the trees in his chair in the garden of the Hôtel Baur au Lac, and we had an interesting talk on the condition of European politics at the time. He spoke in the friendliest way of England. Amongst his dreams for the future is that of a real friendship between France and Germany. His father was for some years German Ambassador to France. His uncle was the German Chancellor. He himself lived in Paris for years. And this close acquaintance with the French people had evidently had a happy result. His invalidism restricts his physical activities; but he is a prolific and able writer, whose writings invariably aim at the establishment of pacific relations amongst the nations of the world.
A speaker who proved most acceptable at the public meetings was Mrs. Despard. Not only was her speaking liked, but she made an extraordinary impression upon the Swiss people by the immense dignity, I might almost say majesty, of her appearance. A walk with Mrs. Despard along the main street of Zurich stands out in my memory. She was entirely unaware of the sensation she made; but it is a simple fact that this beautiful old lady with her aristocratic bearing and fine features, her snowy hair tucked under a black Spanish lace mantilla, her old-fashioned long dress and sandalled feet caused everybody who passed her to stop and stare and stop and stare again, wonder all over his face. There was respect in every look; no vulgar curiosity. Some men, entirely unknown to either of us, raised their hats as they passed us, saluting her as if she were a queen.
Mrs. Despard is more than seventy years of age, yet she shames us all by the strenuousness of her life. She is Irish, with an Irishwoman’s quick imagination and warm heart. When visiting an English town to make a speech, she is usually advertised as the sister of Viscount (now Earl) French. Whether this is done to attract an audience by taking the edge off her Socialism through her connexion with titled folk, or whether it is thought that otherwise she would interest nobody because unknown to most, I cannot say; but Mrs. Despard can stand entirely on her own feet for the richness of her personality and the quality and variety of her work, always on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. The only value to be attached to the advertised connexion with Lord French lies in its demonstration of the possibility of there being varied opinions without alienated affections in one family. Lord French and his sister differ as far as the poles in political opinions. She is a democrat, a Socialist, a pacifist. Nobody knows his politics. She is in favour of self-determination for Ireland. He has been Ireland’s Governor-General under the Terror. Yet I understand there exists a very tender affection the one for the other; and nothing could shake Mrs. Despard’s belief that, in all his actions, whether as a soldier or a statesman, her beloved brother has been actuated by the finest motives that can govern any man in a position of grave responsibility for the lives and welfare of the people in his charge. In England we have christened her the “grandmother of the revolution,” because when many of us were babes in arms, Mrs. Despard was carrying the flag of freedom in the cause which we hope will ultimately secure the material happiness of mankind. But in spirit she is the youngest of us all.