“What is Latzko like?” I asked a friend.
“Latzko is a pacifist monkey of Hungarian birth,” replied this complimentary individual. Latzko is small and dark and vain. He makes fiery speeches with nothing much in them except emotion. I should say his experiences in the trenches have seriously impaired his constitution and his nerve. He gives the impression of being neurotic and erratic. He is very self-absorbed. I must tell of a curious experience which befel, illustrative of Latzko’s temperament and character. A friend and I were supping at the hotel where he lodged. Presently came a message from Latzko’s son begging that we would call and see his father. He was seriously ill in bed. “Will you go?” asked my friend. “By all means when he is so ill. He must have something very serious to say,” was my reply. My companion smiled sardonically, but sent the boy with a message to say we would come up in half an hour. When we arrived we found the poor little man sitting up in bed, propped with pillows and making a great moan in a weak, strained voice. He thanked us effusively for coming, gasping as he spoke. I thought he must be dying. He spoke of his wife as of one who would soon be left to struggle with the wicked world alone. He showed us her photograph. She was away in Hungary. He was longing to see her. Then he came to the real business of the occasion. Would I call and see his publisher in England and find out why the royalties were not forthcoming. My companion grinned again.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked, rather puzzled, as we descended the stairs. “I am laughing at an amusing farce just played,” he said. “At supper you sat with your back to the hotel entry. I saw Latzko enter during our meal, look in at the glass door furtively, recognize us, and rush upstairs to prepare for his part. The rest you know.”
“Then he is not ill,” I said disgustedly, thinking of the pillow I had smoothed, and the tenderness I had wasted.
“Oh yes, he is ill, very ill; but not in the way you think,” was the slow reply. “He is sick of self-love.”
One more interesting delegate at this Conference comes to my remembrance, Professor Nicolai, a slight, fair man with hair pushed back over a large forehead, and a thin, small chin. He presented rather a limp appearance, doubtless due in part to under-feeding, but a little also to the radical idealist’s too-frequent inattention to matters of the toilet. His collar had a greyish look and his cuffs were not there!
Dr. Nicolai enjoys the distinction of being the first person to establish the war against war on a scientific basis. His “Biology of War” is an arresting and most valuable contribution to the literature of the movement. During the war he was constantly coming into collision with the German authorities for his pacifist utterances. He was several times tried for his offences, sentenced to prison, retried and tried again. The Government never actually imprisoned him. Such cases as his and Dr. Förster’s are worthy of note for two reasons. There are many people in England who believe that no voice was raised against the war and the war policy of the German Government by Germans in Germany during the war. This is demonstrated untrue. Then the comparatively mild treatment by the German authorities of their pacifist professors is interesting in view of the reputed intolerance of the German war-lords for those not of their own political breed. In 1918 Dr. Nicolai escaped to Denmark in an aeroplane, but is now back in his chair at the University of Berlin. There he is the centre of vicious attacks by reactionary professors, who pit against his new, their old, hoping the turn of the wheel will bring back the old order to the Fatherland.
The Conference and its several Commissions sat for three weeks. There were many occasions for social intercourse between the various sessions. The hotel was packed with interesting personalities. In view of his elevated position as Prime Minister of Hungary, I recall with interest my meeting with Count Teleki. He was presented to me as a moderate Socialist. It all depends upon definition. At that time the Bolsheviks were in power in Hungary. By comparison with Bela Kun I imagine Count Teleki sincerely believed himself a moderate Socialist. Or perhaps I took seriously what was intended for a joke. Perhaps it was one of those insincerities of speech, uttered to please and without the slightest regard to the truth, I found so common in the nationals of Latin and Balkan countries. Count Teleki’s present behaviour suggests the aristocratic reactionary rather than the Socialist. He is said to have aided Kaiser Karl in his ill-timed escapade. But in the Hôtel Belle Vue at the brilliant dinner table he was the charming, cynical, cultivated friend of political saint and sinner alike; a scientist in exile; a professor without a chair; a patriot without a country; a good fellow and a jolly companion. He is a man of moderate height, with thin features and a clean-shaven face. He is not unlike Mr. Bertrand Russell in appearance, and is probably not more than forty years of age. From my conversation with him I cannot imagine for a moment that he is in sympathy with the action of the Hungarian extremists, who have instituted a “White Terror” worse than the Red since the fall of Bela Kun and his associates. And I think it only fair in this connexion to say that every Hungarian with whom I spoke in Berne agreed that Bela Kun himself was no sympathizer with the behaviour of his own extremists. He suffered the common fate of rulers tossed up by violent revolutions—the poisonous association of worse and stronger men than himself.