August 21, 1892

Honored Baroness:

The quite abnormal heat that has been prevalent for some time has so affected my nerves and made me so unwell that I shall hardly be able to carry out my intention of taking part in the Conference at Bern.

I will not yet definitively decline, but I hardly believe that I can get to Bern. I have no desire to act as a dumb listener and looker-on, and for taking a part in word and deed I do not, to speak frankly, feel myself either in the mood or well enough.

At the request of Baron Pirquet I have, during the recent sessions, put questions to various members of the Herrenhaus, and sounded them as to whether they would not be pleased to take part in the deliberations of the Conference, and, anyhow, to express their sympathy with our endeavors by letting their names appear on the list of those who are working for peace in the world.

Unfortunately, the least that I got was a courteous declination; in most cases it was an ironical answer, of course always in such polite terms as admitted of no decided protest. I had also the opportunity of speaking with a personage of exalted position about the idea of peace in general, but everywhere I found expressed more or less the idea that the German lady betrothed to a German officer, on page nine of the Festival Number of Die Waffen nieder, develops:[[41]] Sooner sacrifice millions, sooner bring upon men limitless misery, sooner ruin states financially, decimate the population, plunge families in want, mourning, and the deepest distress, than be unfaithful to traditional ideas; every thought of a peace movement of that kind is actually interpreted as if there must be cowardice back of it.

I cannot say that these utterances which I have recently heard enhance my hopes of a speedy success, but none the less I harbor the conviction that sometime the idea will make its way, and that at least the civilized nations of Europe will acknowledge allegiance to the principle of arbitration and will bring their controversies to a decision in that way.

I had not very long ago an extremely interesting letter from a Pole who is very warm on the peace question and sends me all sorts of peace journals and bits of news, but will not agree to peace, to the idea of a permanent peace anyway, till Poland is an independent kingdom and free both from Russia and from Austria—and he himself admits that of course this could not be attained until after a bloody war and strife. And this is the way with a good many adherents of the peace idea: first they want to see their own object attained, they shrink from no difficulties, no deluge of blood, and only when they have gained their own ends are they willing to make peace. The fact is, to accept subordination, to submit, is what individual men cannot do, much less peoples and nations; and just as we stand for the idea of peace and are carrying on a propaganda for it—of course only with very slight progress against the existing hostility to it—so others are fanning the hatred and discord of the nations, are egging on the nations to senseless national hatred, and use this to serve their own foul purposes, to attain their own despicable ends.

Most heartily wishing the best success to you at Bern, highly honored Baroness, and promising that in thought and feeling I shall be one at this so honorable assemblage which is striving for the ennobling of humanity, I sign myself with the assurance of my fullest respect and devotion,

Your sincerely admiring and appreciative