Then, as soon as we were alone, we broached the subject of the efforts in which we were respectively engaged. I had not then heard any of Egidy’s public speeches, but even in his conversation words flowed warmly and eloquently from his lips. He was so completely penetrated with his ideas, his plans, his hopes, that he uttered what he was full of. Such an utterance were his speeches also, as I afterward discovered; only in them he spoke with an exceptionally loud, clear, and deliberate utterance, and was often carried to heights of eloquence by his inward fire. In the drawing-room, of course, he spoke gently and more simply, but still with ever logical fullness of thought, always consistent with himself. We now let him know our ideas and aims also. The peace cause Egidy had not yet included in his programme, although theoretically he agreed with us.
The next day we visited him in his home. A beautiful, harmonious family circle. A congenial wife—born Princess of something, I have forgotten the name—and ten children. To be sure, not all ten were at home. The oldest son was serving in the navy; one daughter was studying in Sweden; but at any rate there was a fine bunch of Egidy children present, and all seemed to worship their father. One of the daughters acted as his secretary. Charming hours those were which we spent in the plainly furnished home in eager speech and reply, in which the wife and the older children took part, about the loftiest aims of human struggle and labor,—reconciliation, peace, consecration of life. “We are pulling on different ropes,” said Egidy to us, “but it is the same bell.”
Later, when on the occasion of his candidacy I wrote to him how desirable it was that such servants of the community, such thinkers who stood above narrow party interests, should be members of the popular assembly, and how different everything would then at once be, he wrote back to me:
Everything will not be different at once, but gradually—of course; but the tempo decides. “Gradually” everybody says; the point is whether it is slow step by numbers—One—back again—One—back again—Twooooo (you surely know something of the drillground?) or, of course, rather livelier, try even a bit of quick step for aught I care—no need that it be a double quick with tambours battants. And it is coming. It has to come. What phases we may still have to pass through I would not say, in view of the latest phenomena in our public life. As yet I still do not believe in a bloody settlement. The incoming of the new view of the world will come about, not without tears and outcries, but still as a natural process, as a birth.
You speak of my working power. Well, yes, I have working power and creative impulse, and how I yearn to be able to bring both “immediately” into service. Inwardly I am so well prepared and equipped that at a second’s notice I could take up my duties. I am sure of myself. If one chooses to speak at all of a value which I may be supposed to represent (as your words do in such a wonderfully pretty way), this value can only be seen in the future. Many have already spoken and written, but if they were put before the “doing” they gave out; they made miserable compromises with shallow unchangeableness and other wretched notions. Honesty, concord, the bringing into concord of preaching and practice, is what the business means for me. And in this matter I will not yield a hair’s breadth from my apprehension of the truth.
On our return from Hamburg, where we had gone after my Berlin address, we stopped in Berlin (as has already been mentioned) for only an hour at the railway station. Thereupon Egidy wrote me the following letter, which also I will put on record here because it shows so very clearly how Egidy conceived of his busy work and of a possible coöperation with me:
Berlin, N. W., Spenerstrasse 18, May 11, 1892
Highly honored Lady:
You passed through Berlin and we knew nothing about it, when we had been taking so much pleasure in the anticipation and planning everything so as to enjoy, if possible, a few more hours of interchange of thought with you and Herr von Suttner.
For in truth I had my heart very much set on it. I would gladly have anchored our acquaintance on a ground that might be fruitful for the community. We must act (operate) on one set of principles. Guerrilla warfare of individuals, or even of groups, must be superseded by a systematic action of all under one controlling idea, with each one conscious of the object to be attained. The heads of all columns must now appear on the battlefield; those who always do nothing but talk of religion, Christianity, and the Church, without being honest men or thinking of their brothers,—those we leave to march in circuit around the battlefield as they have been doing in the past. Our idea is the conquest, not merely the combating, of the old view of the world; the new appears to me under the name “Christianity,” to you under the name “Humanity.” That ought not to separate us, however, but should make the one complement the other. Perhaps, too, with the meaning which I give to the concept “Christianity,” “Humanity brought closer to the Godhead,” you may be able to accept the word. For the success of our endeavors, and that is the only point that concerns us, the word “Christian” is indispensable. Yes, the circles that you already have will be content with the word “Man”; but millions will not accept it.