Present status and prospects of the Peace Movement

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
BY BARONESS BERTHA VON SÜTTNER.
Letters of condolence and of cynicism come to my desk in these latter days in increasing number. There is a note of triumph and of mockery in one group: “What has become of the famous Peace idea? The South African war, following immediately upon the close of the Peace Conference at The Hague, has not yet reached its end, and already the horizon in Eastern Asia is lurid with the glare of a world-war. Are you convinced now of the absurdity of your claims, ye dreamers of peace?” Through the second group runs an undertone of commiseration: “What suffering must have come to you, honored madame, and to your friends, in seeing your beautiful illusion shattered. Sad, sad; but thus it is. War is an historic law, and your ideals are simply—ideals. You will have to reef your sails in the face of such a storm of facts.”
It is true that a feebly manned boat cannot battle against storm and surf. But the simile ill fits the effort to establish peace. That is no boat; it is a rock. The waves may top it with their wrathful spume, but naught can affect its granite permanence.
Let me set aside metaphor and reply to my correspondents. Let me endeavor to show them the point of view from which the advocates of peace regard the present condition of the world, and the nature of the duties and prospects, the hopes and self-denials to be descried therefrom.
In the first place, we admit candidly that we have been mistaken; not, however, in the principles we have enunciated, but in our estimate of present culture. We had regarded public conscience as being permeated by a longing for international right and by an abhorrence of despotism to a greater degree than the facts of the case warrant.
The warlike events that surge about us and threaten us furnish no proof against the principles of the peace movement. They merely prove that these principles have not yet entered fully into the conscience of nations and of their leaders; that the movement is not yet sufficiently advanced in its spread, its organization, its methods of action, to verify the hopes fostered by the conference at The Hague for an early eradication of old, deeply-rooted institutions of brute force. In other words, we have been mistaken, not in the fundamental statements we have made, but in the conception that they were more widely accepted than they have proved to be.