Many other speakers supported the motion, and at last it was adopted with acclamation.
I felt deeply moved; so did My Own, who sat beside me; we exchanged a silent pressure of the hand.
The members were then chosen who should formulate the plan which was to be laid before the next year’s Conference.
This plan,—I anticipate events in order to show that that session was really historical,—this plan was presented to the Conference of 1895, at Brussels, was accepted and sent to all the governments, and assuredly contributed to the calling of the Hague Conference in 1898, and served as a basis for the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and its regulations.
That session brought one other sensation. After Stanhope’s motion was adopted, Randal Cremer mounted the platform. He was greeted with loud applause. He, together with Frédéric Passy, had been the inaugurator of the Interparliamentary Conferences. He had secured the signatures for the Anglo-American arbitration treaty, first in his own country and then, after crossing the ocean, in the United States; and it was due to him that the motion on that famous sixteenth of June, 1893, was adopted with Gladstone’s aid. His mode of speaking is simple and unadorned; he betrays clearly the former laboring man.
After the session he came up to us in the corridor and informed us that before leaving home he talked with Lord Rosebery; that he had not been permitted to repeat at the Conference what the Premier had said to him, but it had been of the most encouraging character. His feeling of confidence communicated itself to us.
The concluding banquet took place in the assembly room at Scheveningen. The orchestra played all the national hymns in succession. I sat between Rahusen and Houzeau. Stanhope delivered an extraordinarily keen and witty speech, the venerable Passy one full of eloquence and fire. I also had to speak. Fireworks were set off on the esplanade. The final apotheosis formed the words Vive la Paix, glowing in fiery letters, over which beamed a genius with a branch of palms.
What thoughts were in the minds of the guests of the watering-place as they promenaded by and stared at us? Probably none, and they were not so very far wrong; for what is left after the words have ceased, the toasts have been pledged, and the fireworks have been sent off? Nothing! From far down in the depths must the energies come through which epochs are changed....
XLVI
VARIOUS RECOLLECTIONS
In Harmannsdorf again · My husband writes Sie wollen nicht · Max Nordau’s opinion of it · My labors and correspondence · Rear Admiral Réveillère · Dolmens and menhirs · From the patriot of Brittany to the patriot of humanity · Réveillère’s views about social economy, the lot of the masses, professional politicians, etc. · A fine comparison · Deaths of Prince Achille Murat, Duke von Oldenburg, and Ruggero Bonghi