“If nothing more than that should be accomplished, it would be an outrageous trick played on the hopes of the nations, and also a disappointment for the Tsar, whose wishes for an arbitral tribunal—”
The correspondent laughingly interrupted me:
“We spoke about this also. Now that is simply childish. The states would not comply with a decision which did not please them.”
“Such a case has never once occurred.”
“For the reason that, up to the present time, arbitration has settled only trivialities; but when vital questions are concerned—”
Forever and ever the time-worn arguments. I heard it come in its regular sequence, “the vital question,” although no one knows exactly what he means by it. What, indeed, can these “vital” concerns be that are best promoted by killing off men by the hundred thousand?
May 17. Stead arrived. Directly from St. Petersburg, where he had an audience with Nicholas II, lasting an hour and a half, and spoke quite candidly about Finland. The Tsar also empowered him to speak on the same theme—in favor of Finnish liberties—the next day in a public assembly.
Stead also stopped over in Berlin on his way hither, and had a conversation with Bülow, bringing up among other things the case of Professor Stengel and his antipeace pamphlet. Herr von Bülow at first denied that the professor had written the brochure, and was quite hot about it.
“It is not true,” he declared, “it is pure invention.”
“That cannot well be said, for the pamphlet is in its third edition....”