In the evening the usual Friday reception at the Beauforts. Make several new acquaintances; among them Turkhan Pasha. In his elegant external appearance he reminds me of Rudolf Hoyos; he has been for many years Minister of Foreign Affairs, and bears the title of Vizier. He enjoyed the dubious fortune of having been military governor of the island of Crete. He speaks the purest French, is courteous and gracious, but a slightly satirical tone dominates his conversation.
I also meet Noury Bey, the second Turkish delegate, a man at least forty years of age, with very delicate features and reddish beard; he is inspector in the Ministry of Public Works. Last year he was sent as delegate from Turkey to the anti-anarchist Congress at Rome. Both the Ottoman dignitaries give me the impression of not regarding the success of the business here as especially likely or desirable.
Chedomille Myatovic, former Servian Minister of Foreign Affairs and now Minister Plenipotentiary at London, is on the other hand an enthusiastic adherent of the ends proposed by the Conference.
Augustin d’Ornellos Vasconsellos, the delegate from Portugal, tells me that he has translated Goethe’s Faust into his vernacular.
I meet De Mier, Mexican ambassador in Paris. Except the United States and Mexico, no American country is represented here.
June 3. The evening of Bloch’s lecture. The public invited. Almost all the delegates present. Many journalists, Dutch and foreign. Subject, “The Development of Firearms.” Behind the lecturer’s desk a white background for the stereopticon pictures. Bloch speaks with great naturalness and simplicity; never seeks oratorical effects. It is evident that he does not care to “deliver an address,” but only to say what he has to say. He wants to show a picture of the war of the future. And where would he find a more suitable public than the audience assembled here,—diplomats and military men who would be called upon to deliberate over some such war or to wage it, but are now called upon to avoid it?
The historic development of firearms, from the first flintlock down to the latest models, is displayed before the audience by means of pictures and charts. The projectile of the new infantry weapon sweeps away everything that it encounters, within a range of six hundred meters. But still greater improvements beckon. In all armies experiments are being made with rifles of smaller caliber. It is calculated that if in the Franco-Prussian War the present-day guns had been used, the losses would have been at least four times as great; if the newest models had been used, the losses would have been thirteen times as great. To be sure, such a transformation in the armies of the Dreibund and of the Zweibund would cost four billion francs.
(Now, in view of such a fine result—just consider, thirteen times more dead and maimed than with the primitive musket—four billions would not indeed be too much, and this sum is easily raised by somewhat increasing the living expenses of the laboring people!)
That parenthesis is mine, not Bloch’s. His lecture is quite objective; he makes no bitter attacks; he adduces figures and data; the drawing of conclusions he leaves to the reason and the conscience of his hearers.
The lecture is interrupted by a half hour’s recess. In an adjoining hall, tables are loaded with all kinds of refreshments, which are passed round. Bloch is host, and the lecture halls are transformed into drawing-rooms, where greetings are exchanged, new acquaintances are made, and impressions of the lecture are compared.