At the first meeting of the International in Berne in 1919 I was very much interested in a lively little man from Alsace-Lorraine. His name was Grumbach, and he had a house in Berne, and a handsome wife with bright hair and a plump figure. In appearance he reminded me a little of an English coachman. He was smooth-shaven, with a bit of hair left on either cheek in the old-fashioned way. His face was round, and he had a sweet and rather childlike mouth. His eyes were very merry, and his manner kind. But the roar of him when he spoke was like that of a mad bull. He was very angry with the Germans, and could not contain himself on the platform, foaming at the mouth almost, as he lashed out at those unfortunate men on the front row. He made an excellent double bass to Renaudel’s tenor and Thomas’s baritone, whenever the wild music got going. And just as suddenly he melted into the utmost amiability. He disliked their past, and suspected the future policy of the Germans in relation to his own country. I have not seen him since the early days in Berne; but I have heard that his present discontent is with French administration and French behaviour in the restored provinces and that he favours an independent Alsace-Lorraine within the French orbit. I wonder what is true?
Another Alsatian of a different type was René Schickele, one of the leaders of the younger German poets. I met him also in Berne, but not at the Conference. This young and distinguished dramatist was introduced to me by Annette Kolb. He impressed me as shy and diffident; but that may have been the embarrassment of not knowing English. There is no barrier like that of not knowing the language of an acquaintance. He promised to learn English for our next meeting, and I promised myself to learn enough German to be intelligible. But how can one learn foreign languages when everybody abroad wants to practise his English?
During the war Schickele placed himself in opposition to the German Government. He was a German citizen then. Now he is in opposition to France. He is a French citizen now. The cynic would smile and talk of the passion for self-advertising; but I think there is a reasonable case for this position in a pacifist, who is out to smite the ugly spirit of militarism whenever and wherever it raises its offending head.
His play Hans in Schnakenloch was an attempt to give a just exposition of the psychology of French and Germans in Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans called it Francophile, the French considered it pro-German. It had an immense success in Germany in 1917, until it was suppressed by the military censor. Schickele belongs to the Clarté group. Fried, who died a short time ago, the kindly sentimentalist, but courageous Austrian pacifist, so long exiled in Switzerland, who won the Nobel prize, was another member of the band. René Claparéde of Geneva, Barbusse and Anatole France belong to the same group. Their policy is very much the same as that of the Union of Democratic Control in England. The poet’s ultimate aim in politics is the friendship and conciliation of Germany and France.
When I was invited to attend the French Socialist Congress in Strasburg in January of 1920, exactly one year after the first meeting of the Second International, I thought of these two personalities, the only human connexion I had with Alsace, and hoped to meet again in their capital city of ancient fame and modern interest these two able men. Neither, however, was present.
But Renaudel was there, and Longuet and Marquet, and all the hosts of fighting French Socialism.
The battle of the two Internationals was by this time waxing fast and furious. The Italians had split in two, the French were about to follow, the British were threatened. My commission to the French congress was to convey greetings from the British Labour Party to the delegates; but also to make it clear that the Labour Party intended to cleave to the Second International in spite of the efforts of a few voluble intransigéants to draw it into the Third.
These various Internationals must be confusing to the average reader. The First was founded by Karl Marx and Professor Beesly in 1866, and dissolved in the wars of 1871. The Second was re-established in 1889, and discontinued its activities during the world-war. Its meeting in Berne I have already fully described. The success of the Revolution in Russia filled with arrogance the souls of the dominant Bolsheviks who determined to unite the entire world-Socialist Movement under their flag. They would dominate, command, discipline from Moscow every country in the world. They drew up twenty-one theses which they insisted should be accepted by all who would join them—the Third International. These included dictatorship instead of democracy, revolution by violence, and the abolition by force of the whole institution of private property, as against other methods of securing a just social and industrial order.
Round these two sets of proposals and methods the conflict has raged. Every Socialist Movement in Europe was split from top to bottom. America copied. New and ever new Internationals threatened to be born of the dissident sections. Capitalist Europe rocked with laughter. To keep the working-classes divided amongst themselves has always been the wisdom and the joy of the intelligent in the possessing classes. The Socialist Movement began to look ridiculous. It has not yet got back to common sense and sweet reasonableness. In the various national movements, arrogant and conceited young men are continually making fresh “caves.” Offshoots of bumptious young people and venerable idiots, who think that wisdom will die with them, keep the general movement in a turmoil of quarrelsomeness whilst the enemy consolidates his ranks. The pity and the folly of it!
So far as I could discover there were at least five sections in the French Conference apparently hating one another far more keenly than the outsider. There was the Extreme Right, which had supported the war without question. There was the Extreme Left which had opposed it without tact. There was the following of Renaudel who opposed the Moscow International. There were the adherents of Vaillant-Couturier who supported it. There were the friends of Longuet, who did both. I do not mean that these last belonged to the cult of the jumping cat! They were not mean and “discreet.” They simply wanted to leave the door open for a future reunion of the two bodies of disputants.
I spent the first day listening to the eloquent wranglings of the sections, and then went to view the city of Strasburg. The old parts are French, but the solid new parts of the city are German. It is a quiet old city of cafés and quaint streets and houses. It is dominated by its wonderful cathedral with the historic clock. The small hotel where I stayed, with its German proprietor, was a model of cleanliness. In front ran the canalized river. Bands of troops, black and white, marched through the streets, but the citizens paid little attention to them. Only once did I see a touching thing. A few bold boys marched singing a tune with a familiar sound about it. I stopped to look and listen. Near me was a student, a boy of twenty-three or four, with a broad round face and rather long fair hair. He had tears in his eyes, and held his cap in his hand. What had moved him? Not that simple, boyish singing? Was it the song? I caught the word “Heimland” as the lads marched past, and—yes—there was just one phrase in the song which brought to mind the English melody, “Home, sweet home!”
On the second day I made my speech. The gallant Frenchmen received it well, and I left the platform in a storm of cheers. But that was for the woman and not the speech; for they did not understand a word, and they voted heavily for the Third International at a subsequent meeting! The split was inevitable.
The next day I left for Berne en route for Geneva and the conference of the Save the Children Fund. I had to spend several hours at Basle and arrived in Berne at six in the evening. But what was the matter with the place? The station was as quiet as a church on weekdays. And the Hôtel Belle Vue was like a huge crypt, cold and clammy and empty. In that great lounge and immense drawing-room capable of holding comfortably a thousand persons, there were not three people! The drawing-room was dark; and the lounge lit by only a few dim lights. Were all the people in their rooms, or what was wrong?
“You are very quiet, aren’t you?” I asked the hotel clerk as I signed the register.
“Yes, madam,” he replied. “Most people are leaving Berne. Here are several letters for you which are probably from some of your friends.”
I tore open the letters one after the other. Mr. Rudolf Kommer had gone to Berlin. Mrs. Lord was in Lugano. Prince Windischgraetz was in Paris. His wife had left for Prague. The group of German pacifists had returned to Berlin. Dr. de Jong was in Basle. M. Zalewski, the Polish Minister in Berne, whom I had met in England, and with whom I had renewed my acquaintance in Switzerland, was rumoured to have gone as Minister to Athens. Madame de Rusiecka, another Polish friend, was living in Geneva. Baron Szilassy and his sister were in Bex. Mr. de Kay was in Lucerne. Mr. Savery had been sent to the Legation in Warsaw—all, all had gone, the old familiar faces! And what a desolation they had left!
I gathered up my letters and prepared to take a walk to discover if there were anybody left. Was the Assyrian giant with the Gargantuan appetite still sitting in the Wiener Café? I have referred before to Dr. Ludwig Bauer, but he deserves another word. For he was a truly remarkable journalist. From the early days of the war he wrote every day, without exception, the leading article on politics for the Basle National Zeitung. His articles were always marked #—so he became known as the “Kreuzlbauer.” They were read all over the country, a thing which happened for the first time in the journalistic history of Switzerland, it was said. The little Basle paper became suddenly an organ of national importance. The international representatives, diplomats, foreign correspondents, propagandists read the articles with great care. It is a curious fact that this Austrian was spoken of as “the only neutral in Switzerland.” The French Swiss were more French than the French. The German Swiss were more German than the Germans. The Swiss Government tried to steer an equal course between the two sets of belligerents. There the Austrian journalist was useful. He expressed neutrality day by day. His articles were quoted in Paris and in Berlin. Occasionally his paper was excluded from one or the other, he himself being bitterly attacked by both sides. Most of all was he attacked by his Swiss colleagues who resented the great success of the foreign intruder, with a mentality more Swiss than their own. Another and a greater alien, Friedrich Schiller, whose “Wilhelm Tell” is the classic reading of Swiss youth, never saw Switzerland, but had caught the Swiss spirit better than some of the sons of the soil!
Dr. Bauer was not at the café. Neither were the jewelled and fragrant women who used to sip its sparkling wines, whilst they waited in the ante-chamber to Paris for their visa for the Heaven of their dreams. The war produced large numbers of this feminine type. I knew several of them. Sometimes beautiful, often wealthy, in spite of fallen money values, they played their game of coquetry in Berne to while away the time till better things came in sight. The ghastly tragedy of famine passed them by. The sufferings of the war left them cold. The colossal spectacle of Europe’s downfall was nothing to them. Clothes, jewels, fine furniture, a good social position were the only things which counted with them. Their lovers from the broken countries they flouted. They had just enough practical sense to see that the things they wanted were not to be found in the land of their birth. Their men had become ineligible. They would take husbands from the lands of the conquerors. The “Entente husband” became an institution and the fair husband-hunters a joke. Beauty, wealth maintained by gambling in exchanges, in return for an “Entente husband” and a visum for Paris and the glory of silks and scents and a place with the conquerors! I know one such woman, a beautiful Pole—but let me be merciful!
On my return to the hotel I found a note from an American friend asking me to dine and saying she would call for me at eight. This was cheering. How it is known so quickly that one is in a place passes my comprehension! Punctually at eight she burst into my room, looking as radiant as the May, although she is nearly forty.
“Tell me,” I asked. “How do you keep yourself so young, you amazing woman?”
“Simple enough,” she retorted. “Massage and a blameless life, my dear.”
We dined with several members of the Hungarian Red Cross, gone crazy with hate of Bolshevism, who talked themselves hoarse about the iniquities of the Jews and ate so many oysters that I began to be nervous for their constitutions. And so ended the last of my days in Berne.
I was too late for the Geneva Conference. The delegates had had their last sitting, and only a social function to say farewell remained. There I met a number of dear friends full of good works. I have written of Mrs. Buxton and her sister. These and their like compensate the world for the idle and mischievous butterflies waiting for their Paris visa and frocks and jewels.
At the theatre that evening a curious little international group talked of their many adventures of travel, with the difficulties of getting passports as a conspicuous item of conversation. One spoke of the amount he had had to pay in bribes in Rumania, another of having lost his passport. “But I had a receipted tailor’s bill in my pocket. The Austrian Royal Arms were at the head. It was an old bill. And they accepted it as my passport without a question. It looked important and the fellow who looked at it couldn’t read a word, so there was no trouble!” A little picture of Balkan Europe which tells a story one can read only too well.
Baron Ofenheim is reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in Austria. I only know him as the kindest of friends and the most tender-hearted of men. He has a connexion of many years’ standing with England and is a man of great business capacity, which he has devoted to helping his unfortunate country out of her terribly trying situation. He was one of the most helpful delegates to the Fight the Famine Conference in London. He attended the Geneva Conference urging a better organization than he believed the Save the Children Fund had then achieved. He favoured activity on a larger scale by a more representative body of people than he considered the organizers of the Fund to be at that time. Doubtless the much superior organization that the Fund has achieved under the able secretaryship of Mr. Golden would satisfy the most severe critic, including the Herr Baron. With him was Sir Cyril Butler, at one time a British official in Vienna. With the opinion of these two distinguished men that Vienna would be a far more useful centre for the League of Nations than Geneva, I heartily agree.
Seven months later, in July, 1920, was held in this same city of conferences the second full gathering of the Second International. A further description of its proceedings is not necessary. Controversy followed the same lines as before. But there was a new tone, a better spirit. Germans, French and Belgians grew amicable once more, friendly without being effusive. The British Delegation numbered this time a few delegates of the “extreme left.” They were attending an international conference for the first time. They found the quiet unity too tame. They spoke of the Conference, in private, as dead if not damned. They turned their eyes, if not towards Moscow, away from the work in hand. With the mistaken judgment of the new-comer they made fiery propaganda speeches, forgetting that they were not talking at the street corners, but to a body of Socialists, many of whom were of the best and most intelligent minds in Europe, some of whom had suffered long years of imprisonment and exile for their political faith. They wanted a demonstration and welcomed the interruptions from the gallery which made Huysmans threaten to close it. The interrupters were a band of very young men with wild hair and red ties. A foolish business....
I had a call one day from Baron Bornemiza, the able Hungarian Minister to Berne, whose practical common sense is a great asset to his country, falling from a frenzy of Red fever into a fury of White. He speaks wonderful English and is not un-English in appearance, tall and straight and broad-shouldered. He was concerned about the cartoons of Admiral Horthy which the International was said to be exhibiting on its stall at the Conference. I imagine the local Socialists would be responsible for the literature stall. I never saw the alleged cartoons. They were probably as tasteless and vulgar as most such things. But it is a pity to pay any attention to them. In England one laughs when one is the subject of these exaggerated and generally offensive pictures. I told His Excellency so. Admiral Horthy must be like the King of England. The King is above the law of libel. Or at least he must not condescend to notice his traducers. To do that is to give them an importance they would not otherwise possess. The atrocities of the Hungarian White Terror, for which Horthy was believed to be responsible, would be the cartoonist’s justification of his pictures.
One other person must be mentioned here and then this narrative closes. Dr. Marie de Rusiecka is a Polish lady doctor who served during the Serbian retreat. The stories she is able to tell of that appalling disaster to the Serbian Army make one sick with a shuddering horror. She became an enthusiastic propagandist for peace and all the things which make for peace. She exiled herself from her native land and took up her abode in Geneva. Like all holding her views she was persecuted and slandered. The terribly pro-French Genevese declared her to be pro-German and made life in Geneva impossible for her. She went to Berne. She did more than any other woman, and probably as much, or more, than any one person, to organize the League of Nations Conference. I met her there. Afterwards she took part in the women’s conference at Zurich, and organized for Mrs. Despard and myself a highly successful meeting in Berne on the subject of the Treaty of Versailles.
She is a slight little woman, of fair complexion and energetic manner. She has a soft voice, but is quietly convinced and determined. No effort is too much which will advance the cause of peace. She is almost too grateful for any assistance. She is, I believe, deeply religious. She took rooms at the Hôtel de France, a small and humble hotel in Berne, and there she worked like a Trojan. I do not think she is a rich woman, but she must be spending the whole of her means on this work for peace.
Dr. Rusiecka has produced a French edition of Foreign Affairs. She is helping to edit a newspaper in Geneva along with the distinguished pacifist M. René Claparéde.
Nothing can discourage this gallant little woman. I have known things happen to her which would have driven most women into the haven of private life. But she goes on—brave, strong, defiant of wrong, and defendant of right. Wherever in Europe the word peace is spoken and meant the name of Dr. Rusiecka will be found to be associated with it.