What you need to get, I think, is not the money but the programme. Wishes alone do not assure peace. The like may be said of big dinners with big speeches. One ought to be able to present well-minded governments with an acceptable plan. To demand disarmament is almost to make one’s self ridiculous without profiting any one. To demand the immediate establishment of a court of arbitration is to come into collision with a thousand prejudices and to make every ambitious man an obstructer. To succeed, one ought to be content with more modest beginnings, and do as they do in England with legislative projects whose success is dubious. In such cases they content themselves with passing a temporary law, limited in duration to two years or even to one year. I do not think there would be found many governments that would refuse to take into consideration such a modest proposition, provided it were supported by statesmen of note.
Would it be too much to ask, for example, that for one year the European governments should engage to refer to a tribunal formed for this purpose any difference arising between them; or if they should refuse to take this step, to defer every act of hostility until the expiration of the period stipulated?
This would be apparently little, but it is just by being content with little that one arrives at great results. A year is such a small period of time in the lives of nations, and the most blustering minister will tell himself that it is not worth while to break by force a convention of such short duration. And at the expiration of that period all the states will make haste to renew their peace compact for another year. Thus, without a shock and almost without realizing the fact, they will come to a period of prolonged peace.
Then only will it be of any use to think of proceeding little by little to that disarmament which all good men and almost all governments desire.
And suppose that in spite of everything a quarrel should break out between two governments, do you not think that nine times out of ten they would calm down during the obligatory armistice which they would have to respect?
Believe, dear Baroness, in my affectionate sentiments,
A. Nobel
XXXIV
IN BERLIN AND HAMBURG
My review · Invitation to Berlin · A. H. Fried and his plans · The reading · The Berlin Tageblatt on a letter from Frédéric Passy · A banquet · Voices from the Press · Evening at Spielhagen’s · Dinner at Mosse’s · The Empress Frederick · Professor W. Meyer does us the honors of “Urania” · Excursion to Hamburg · An evening tea with Hans Land, Dr. Löwenberg, Otto Ernst, and Detlev von Liliencron · A letter of Liliencron’s
As aforesaid: on January 1, 1892, began the publication of my review Die Waffen nieder, through the house of A. H. Fried, Berlin. The publisher helped me very zealously in the editing. Distinguished collaborators were represented in the very first numbers: Carneri, Friedrich Jodl, Ludwig Fulda, Björnson, Bonghi, Karl Henckell, Rosegger, Widman, Moritz Adler, and others sent me articles. I published the review for eight years, until the end of 1899. From that time forth its place was taken by the Friedenswarte, edited by A. H. Fried, which is still—in 1908—being published, and to which I regularly contribute a running chronicle entitled Randglossen zur Zeitgeschichte, “Comments on the History of the Time.”
But let us return to 1892. Through my participation in the Congress at Rome, through my editorial labors on the peace review, through correspondence with sympathizers in all parts of the world, through the duties connected with the Vienna Union, I was now wholly absorbed in the movement. The next object of my desire—and in this also I was incited and supported by A. H. Fried—was to see a peace society, established in Berlin likewise.