How much I should like to see you and chat with you! At St. Petersburg all your writings are translated and your individuality interests the public.
It is clear that the sympathies of all are aroused by your beautiful ideas. Nevertheless a strange thing is happening: every one is in favor of peace, and along with that all the powers are arming. International laws are easily read, but the application of them is pretty difficult. One must be resigned and confess that the system of Brennus is always the order of the day.[[45]] The English are doing in the Transvaal what others are doing elsewhere. Did not these very Boers who are pillaged now, first pillage the native Africans? In this world each has his turn. ’Tis the great immutable law. “He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword.” When one is a philosopher, injustice seems the rule, justice the exception.
Salomé will be in Paris in May, I think. I expect to take a trip in August. At all events I will keep you informed of my deeds and actions. I am going to send you my photograph very soon.
Please give my love to your husband, and think of me always as
Your very devoted
Niko
Count Apponyi was still at work on his press project. He wrote me regarding it:
Budapest, March 27, 1900
Dear Madam:
Yesterday something took place here which, with God’s help, may prove of incalculable importance for the peace movement. That is, we have taken the first step toward the establishment of an international peace union of the press, and the Hungarian group, made up of almost all the newspapers of the capital, is already formed. The proposed press union, for which we have elaborated a provisional charter, is to be organized in every degree parallel with the Interparliamentary Union, and is to be in constant touch with it. The idea originated with the Hungarian Interparliamentary Group, which, as a Conseil interparlementaire will make the motion at the Paris Conference, as indeed it has already done at the Brussels meeting, that all the national groups shall endeavor to help form the press groups, and that our Interparliamentary Bureau shall serve these groups as a center until there shall be so many of them that the independent international organization of the press can come into existence.