Thus the opportunity was afforded us of being present during the notable debates of that national representative Conference which was the precursor—and, one may say the cause—of the later Conference of nations at The Hague.
On the day of the opening session, the third of September, there was a reception in the rotunda of the Zoölogical Garden. Here the participants and the guests met together. The president of the Conference, Rahusen, made an address to the foreign Parliamentarians, from which I took down in my notebook the following sentences:
If we pass beyond the boundaries of our country, do we imagine ourselves in a hostile land? Have you had any such experience in coming here? I believe that I am justified in saying No.
... It is a phenomenon of our time that we find a solidarity among the nations such as did not formerly exist.
... I know well that there are still men who ridicule such ideas; meantime let us rejoice that no one condemns them.
... The morning glow of international righteousness indicates the setting of the old war sun. If the last rays of this sun—which, decrepit with age, has already lost its blaze and its warmth—shall once be wholly extinguished,[[8]] then we, or those who come after us, shall be filled with jubilant joy, and shall be astonished that the civilized world could ever have called in brute force as an arbiter between nations no longer inimical to each other but bound together by so many common interests.
After this official part of the evening the company sauntered out into the open air, where the friends, some promenading, some taking places at tables about the rotunda, met and remained chatting till midnight.
At ten o’clock the next morning the formal opening took place in the assembly hall of the First Chamber of the States-General, a hall not very large but as high as a house and having its ceiling decorated with splendid paintings. I had a place in the gallery and enjoyed the magnificent spectacle, as the representatives of fourteen different parliaments took their seats one after another at the green-covered tables, while the members of the government who were to greet the Conference took places on the president’s dais. Minister van Houten, of the Interior Department, made the first address:
“No other cause in the whole world,” said he, “equals in magnitude that which is to be advocated here.”
I must delay a moment over this statement. It expresses what at that time formed (and forms equally to-day) the substratum of my feelings, thoughts, and endeavors, and likewise explains why in this second portion of my memoirs the phases of the peace movement take up so much space.