Frau Schwimmer is of middle age and middle height, with masses of crisp wavy black hair slightly tinged with grey. She wears large gold-rimmed spectacles, and has a hard, aggressive manner and a loud, dominating voice. In speaking she uses her hands a great deal, the forefinger of the right hand playing a conspicuous part in the enforcing of her points. She has a quick intelligence with a brilliant surface cleverness, is sarcastic and voluble, good natured and easy going. She has temperament, but is without stability. She is cruel in her thoughtlessness, but, like her race, has a deep sense of loyalty to her family. She is genuinely devoted to the cause of feminism.
Another visitor to the International I feel constrained to do more than mention was Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York Nation and a lifelong friend of President Wilson. Mr. Villard has a rich inheritance from each side of his family. He is the descendant on the father’s side of one of the famous German revolutionaries who fled to America in 1848. His mother is the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison of anti-slavery fame.
During the visit to America, to which I have already referred, I met Mr. Villard and Mr. George Foster Peabody in the lobby of the House of Representatives in Albany. They apologized for not being able to attend the meeting of the State Legislators I was to address, as they were engaged on business connected importantly with the propaganda for keeping America out of the war. “Mr. Villard has just seen President Wilson—they are lifelong and intimate friends, you know—and he has the impression that enormous pressure is being put upon the President by a section interested in dragging this country into the war. We are very unhappy about it,” said Mr. Peabody.
This does not mean that when the war broke out Mr. Villard took neither side. His sympathies were pro-Ally and anti-German; but he hated the whole bad business of the war and desired to end it quickly. The severe terms of the Armistice and the startling conduct of the Paris Conference caused him to react favourably towards the Bolshevik Government. But from various reactions, he has come to the settled conviction of the need for the revision of the Peace Treaties, and for the establishment of some kind of international political organization like the League of Nations for the securing of permanent peace on the earth.
Mr. Villard is not unlike Mr. A. G. Gardiner, the popular one-time editor of the Daily News. Both men are tall and fair, both fresh complexioned and blue eyed. Both have the same political ideals; though I imagine a distinction inoffensive to both men might be made in expressing the view that Mr. Villard’s passionate hatred of the wrong causes him to swing more violently to the right or to the left and back again whenever he delivers himself up to the dominion of his warm-hearted and generous emotions.
I met Mr. Villard in the Hôtel Continental in Paris first, and persuaded him to come to Berne. There we dined together at the Vienna Café.
Berne is the famous capital of Switzerland. It is a lovely old city with quaint fountains and coloured houses. It is beautifully situated on a ridge of hills, with snow-covered Alpine ranges in the distance, the Jungfrau, handsome and conspicuous, in the middle. The swift river girdles the town, gleaming blue and green in the valley below.
There are stately new buildings in Berne, and a fine market square. There is the monument of the International Postal Union, a globe encircled by female figures clasping hands, representing the various races; and there is the bear pit with its fascinating shaggy inhabitants; but place all the attractions of Berne in one scale and the Wiener Café in the other, and the balance will sink in favour of the café, at least for those unhappy human beings compelled by the misfortunes of their country or the tragic circumstances of the Great War to spend their enforced exile in the restricting circumstances of a small Swiss city.