November 25. Good news. Italy and Menelik have concluded peace. Only a few days ago the Trieste Picolo learned from a diplomat of high rank that the chances for a treaty of peace with Menelik were small; he was unwilling to submit to the condition that he should not put himself under the protection of any European power. “Let the Roman government circles take into account the probabilities that the prisoners must be left to their fate(!) and hostilities resumed.” But the diplomat of high rank was fortunately mistaken. The treaty of peace is signed. In a letter which Menelik on this occasion addressed to the King of Italy he said that it was a pleasure for him, on the twentieth of November, the Queen’s birthday, to be able to restore their sons to the Italian mothers; and thus he showed a tenderer feeling for the prisoners than the above-mentioned Roman government circles.
According to the tenor of the treaty Italy renounces the (falsely interpreted) treaty of Utshili, and the two belligerents resume their former boundaries. Consequently the status quo ante—why, therefore, the great sorrow, the gigantic expenditures, the heaps of corpses mutilated and putrefying in the torrid sun? Why? why?
LI
ALFRED NOBEL’S DEATH AND WILL
News of his death · His last letter to me · The will · Letter from Moritz Adler · The will is contested · Letter from the executor · Emanuel Nobel’s noble act · Fortunate solution · Distribution of the peace prize up to date
December 12. Alfred Nobel is dead.
I recorded this loss in my diary with this single line. The news—I found it in the newspapers—was a bitter blow to me. The tie of a twenty years’ friendship was snapped. The last letter which I received from Nobel was from Paris, dated the twenty-first of November, and ran as follows:
Paris, November 21, 1896
Dear Baroness and Friend:
“Feeling well”—no, unhappily for me, I am not, and I am even consulting doctors, which is contrary not only to my custom, but also to my principles. [I], who have no heart, figuratively speaking, have one organically, and I am conscious of it.
But that will suffice for me and my petty miseries. I am enchanted to see that the peace movement is gaining ground. That is due to the civilizing of the masses, and especially to the prejudice hunters and darkness hunters, among whom you hold an exalted rank. Those are your titles of nobility.