Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 2

by Andrew Dickson White

In the evening, with our minister, Mr. Newel, and the Dean of Ely, his guest, to an exceedingly pleasant "tea" at the house of Baroness Gravensteen, and met a number of interesting people, among them a kindly old gentleman who began diplomatic life as a British attache at Washington in the days of Webster and Clay, and gave me interesting accounts of them.

The queer letters and crankish proposals which come in every day are amazing. I have just added to my collection of diplomatic curiosities a letter from the editor of a Democratic paper in southern Illinois, addressed to me as ambassador at Mayence, which he evidently takes to be the capital of Germany, asking me to look after a great party of Western newspaper men who are to go up the Rhine this summer and make a brief stay in the above-named capital of the empire. I also receive very many letters of introduction, which of course make large demands upon my time. The number of epistles, also, which come in from public meetings in large and small American towns is very great, some evidently representing no persons other than the writers. As I write the above, I open mechanically a letter from a peace meeting assembled in Ledyard, Connecticut, composed of "Rogerine Quakers"; but what a "Rogerine Quaker" is I know not. Some of these letters are touching, and some have a comic side. A very good one comes from May Wright Sewall; would that all the others were as thoughtful!

It goes without saying that the Quakers are out in full force. We have been answering by cable some of the most important communications sent us from America; the others we shall try to acknowledge by mail, though they are so numerous that I begin to despair of this. If these good people only knew how all this distracts us from the work which we have at heart as much as they, we should get considerably more time to think upon the problems before us.

May 22.

In the afternoon came M. de Bloch, the great publicist, who has written four enormous volumes on war in modern times, summaries of which, in the newspapers, are said to have converted the young Emperor Nicholas to peace ideas, and to have been the real cause of his calling the conference together. I found him interesting, full of ideas, and devoted most earnestly to a theory that militarism is gradually impoverishing all modern states, and that the next European war will pauperize most of them.

Just afterward Count Welsersheimb, president of the Austrian delegation, called, and was very anxious to know the line we are to take. I told him frankly that we are instructed to present a plan of arbitration, and to urge a resolution in favor of exempting private property, not contraband of war, from seizure on the high seas; that we are ready to go to the full length in improving the laws of war, and in extending the Geneva rules to maritime warfare; but that we look on the question of reducing armaments as relating wholly to Europe, no part of it being applicable to the United States.

As he seemed strongly in favor of our contention regarding private property on the high seas, but fearful that Russia and England, under a strict construction of the rules, would not permit the subject to be introduced, I pointed out to him certain clauses in the Mouravieff circular which showed that it was entirely admissible.

May 23.

In the morning came a meeting of the American delegation on the subject of telegraphing Washington for further instructions. We find that some of the details in our present instructions are likely to wreck our proposals, and there is a fear among us that, by following too closely the plan laid down for us at Washington, we may run full in the face of the Monroe Doctrine. It is indeed, a question whether our people will be willing to have matters of difference between South American States, or between the United States and a South American State, or between European and South American States, submitted to an arbitration in which a majority of the judges are subjects of European powers. Various drafts of a telegram were made, but the whole matter went over.

At ten the heads of delegations met and considered a plan of organizing the various committees, and the list was read. Each of the three great committees to which the subjects mentioned in the Mouravieff circular are assigned was given a president, vice-president, and two honorary presidents. The first of these committees is to take charge of the preliminary discussion of those articles in the Mouravieff circular concerning the non-augmentation of armies and the limitation in the use of new explosives and of especially destructive weapons. The second committee has for its subject the discussion of humanitarian reforms—namely, the adaptation of the stipulations of the Convention of Geneva of 1864 to maritime warfare, the neutralization of vessels charged with saving the wounded during maritime combats, and the revision of the declaration concerning customs of war elaborated in 1874 by the Conference of Brussels, which has never yet been ratified. The third committee has charge of the subject of arbitration, mediation, and the like.