To Rome! No one can undertake the journey to the Eternal City without being overcome by a certain feeling of awe. There vibrates in the soul a diapason of historic and æsthetic tones, of memories of antiquity and the Renaissance; pictures rise of Forum and Vatican, of gladiators and cardinals, of palaces and churches, of entrancing gardens and dazzling treasures of art. We also, both of us, quivered with this peculiar frisson of joyous expectation when we found ourselves in the train that bore us Romewards. My Own naturally felt it with especial force, for he was to see the Eternal City for the first time. And this frame of mind was still more intensified by the object of our journey,—a congress, a Peace Congress. That was history too, only not ancient history, but the most modern; strictly speaking, the history of a future at whose gates one could as yet only knock; but what a new and beautiful world lay behind these gates!—And was I actually on my way thither as the delegate of a society which I myself had called into existence, and should I there—in the Capitol—meet and take counsel with statesmen from all climes? Was it not an unheard-of temerity, or, in simpler terms, a piece of impudence? It had all come about so quickly; I had acted under such an irresistible impulse, under the compulsion of an eager will, but also under the protection of that naïveté which consists in ignorance of difficulties and hindrances, and which helps forward every hazardous undertaking better than deliberation and experience.
When we arrived at our destination the Interparliamentary Conference was still in session; our Congress was not to begin till two days later. Almost all the participants in the two events had taken up their quarters in the Hotel Quirinal; and so this whole international society of pacifists—at that time, to be sure, the expression “pacifism” had not been coined—was brought together in constant intercourse,—in the large dining-room at meals, in the halls at all hours of the day in conferring groups, in the drawing-rooms in social intercourse. Here I found all the old friends and colleagues with whom I had so long been in correspondence, and many new friends besides. I remember that at my first arrival there was standing in the vestibule a tall, martial figure, with a white mustache a quarter of a yard long, and an acquaintance who was present introduced “General Türr.” Happy omen, that the first antagonist of war whom we met at the place of the Congress was a general, “a grizzled warrior”! His life’s history comprises a whole chronicle of wars: in 1848 as lieutenant under Radetzky in Italy; in 1849 with Kossuth in the Hungarian Revolution. Banished from Hungary, he was one of the English army in the Crimean War; in 1855 arrested in traveling through Hungary, condemned to death—pardoned through the efforts of the Queen of England. In 1859, on Garibaldi’s general staff, he takes part with the thousand, in the expedition to Marsala; fights at the Volturno with his division; in 1860 is military governor of Naples; in 1861, general-adjutant to King Victor Emmanuel. And how he, the battle-tried veteran, was here, to take part in the peace campaign. Not as a new convert; even when serving with Garibaldi he had been taught the misfortune of war and the hope that a European peace organization might be possible, for he was the inspirer of the famous manifesto sent out by Garibaldi to the princes of Europe inviting them to union; and ever since 1867 he had been a member of the French Peace Society founded by Frédéric Passy.
As the Interparliamentary Conference was still in session when we reached Rome, we had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of the representatives of the fourteen different parliaments who were here assembled under the presidency of Minister Biancheri. It was originally intended that Ruggero Bonghi should preside, but he had withdrawn, for a whole little revolution had broken out, and the German and Austrian parliamentarians would not have gone to Rome if Bonghi had not waived the chairmanship. What had occurred? The famous savant and former Minister of Public Instruction had published in some review an article which contained language expressing sympathy with the French conception of the Alsace-Lorraine question. I find among my letters an echo of the feeling that was aroused at that time in both the parliaments of Central Europe. Superintendent Haase, member of the Austrian Reichsrat, wrote me:
Noble and highly honored Baroness:
After a three weeks’ absence I came to Vienna yesterday by way of Teschen, where I gave hasty attention to only the most important official papers and packed into my trunk the private letters that had arrived for me. I am sincerely distressed to find now that your letter of the twenty-third of last month has remained unanswered, and that you must be having a very curious idea of my politeness. So, in the first place, I crave your pardon.
As regards the business, I must make a distinction between the general and the specific. Whatever service I can perform in the cause of human charity will always be gladly done; and if you should ever be in want of my commonplace services, call upon me. It will be a double pleasure to me to help forward a good work if at the same time I can be of service to an ideal woman, so worthy of deference for her high-mindedness. Do not, I beg of you, take this as banal flattery. But the special case with which we are concerned to-day has become different since you wrote to me. To take part in the Interparliamentary Conference this year, and in the Peace Congress at Rome, as I had intended, is no longer possible for me.
For, even though Signor Bonghi does at a later time give out that Alsace-Lorraine will not be spoken of at the Congress, yet in consideration of what he has already said he is not the man under whose leadership the friends of peace can meet in conference.
War is not merely a misfortune, it is a crime, committed by the person who calls it forth. But in the statement that a demand which can be made effective only through the force of arms is justifiable there is surely involved a sort of “summons to the dance,” and whoever issues it, even indirectly, becomes an accessory and responsible for the bloody consequences. Signor Bonghi’s utterances about the position of France toward Alsace-Lorraine would, in case France declared war upon Germany, compel him to approve of this war at least. This involves a logical impossibility of his condemning war altogether; and if he nevertheless does so, he comes into contradiction with himself: Bonghi versus Bonghi.
This contradiction would be bad enough in all conscience if it related to a war of Peru against Chile; but, since the point of Bonghi’s well-known utterance is directed against Germany, those among the friends of peace who are friends of Germany can least of all participate in an assembly over which Bonghi presides and to which he in a sense gives character. I do not know how you feel about this matter. But I should wish that all of us who unite with our hereditary love and fidelity to our Austrian imperial dynasty and fatherland the warmest sympathies for our ally, the German Empire, should not part company in our feelings about this situation.
And now, highly honored Baroness, accept the expression of my most distinguished consideration, with which I sign myself