Isabella came to me the second morning with her eyes full of tears. “Dear Isabella, what is the matter?” I inquired. She showed me a telegram just received by her German neighbour announcing the death of her only daughter. “She is heart-broken,” said my friend. “She was an only child. And it was through hunger that the decline set in. She cannot speak to us this morning. And I do not wonder.”
Two ladies from Munich were the most vigorous speakers on the German side, and were immensely popular. One was Dr. Anita Augspurg, the other Fräulein L. G. Hyman. They live together in Munich, and were as inseparable at the Conference as the Siamese twins. Dr. Augspurg suggests a Franciscan monk in appearance. She wears her grey hair short. Her strong pleasant face has the expression of the religious fanatic whose conviction is founded upon reason, a rare phenomenon in any country, but a type frequently met in the Russian Socialist Movement. In addition, to help the illusion, she wears a severe and loose style of dress suggestive of the robe of a priest. She is kind austerity embodied, simple and dignified. Her intimate friend is more emotional, full of quick passion and, I should imagine, quicker prejudices. Like Dr. Augspurg she is a pacifist and an excellent advocate. Her voice is of masculine timbre, and she has a vigorous and compelling gesture. Both these ladies are extravagant anti-Prussians eager to secure for Bavaria its independence of Berlin. Their account of the revolution in Bavaria was intensely interesting and amusing, and perhaps a few words may be told here quite appropriately.
I have already mentioned Kurt Eisner, the long-haired delegate who met us at Berne railway station on our way to the International. Kurt Eisner was the leader of the Bavarian Revolution, and until his assassination was President-Prime Minister of the Bavarian Republic. For many years this very able Prussian Jew had been the dramatic critic of the German Socialist newspaper Vorwärts. He was a witty and brilliant writer, and was considered by æsthetic Berlin one of her greatest living authorities. Up to the time of the outbreak of war he had barely touched practical politics. His Socialism was the idealistic theorizing of the café habitué, or at best the philosophic conclusion of the amiable and able dreamer of dreams which ought to come true, but do not in a lifetime. When the war broke out he violently opposed the war policy of the German Government. His articles were censored; he was thrown into prison. He was living in Munich at this time. The downfall of the military power in Germany set him free. Having suffered for his faith, he was acclaimed by the leaderless Socialist Movement of Munich one of the martyrs of militarism and the predestined chief of the pacifist Socialist Movement of Bavaria.
The young intellectuals of Munich were yelling all the time “Down with militarism,” but nobody quite knew how it was to be “downed.” The idea occurred to Eisner to march to the palace with a dozen men and demand the abdication of the king. They carried with them a strongly worded manifesto expressing in beautiful language their fine ideals, and marched up to the door of the palace in truculent mood prepared for the worst, hoping for the best. The best was realized. The royal forces offered no resistance. All they asked was that the king might retire unmolested. This was granted. Eisner was set up in the king’s place, head of the new Republic. In a quarter of an hour, without the firing of a shot, the dynasty which had ruled for centuries was suspended, and a member of the despised race, a Jew, and a hated Prussian, was elevated in its stead.
It was a revolution made inevitable by the defeat of the militarists of Germany; but it might have been lasting if the militarists of the Allies had gone the same way. As it is, the peace has made that impossible. The present reaction in Bavaria, the general restoration in Central Europe of a belief in the power of the sword, is due to the revelation of the fact contained in the various Peace Treaties that the power of the sword is the power in which the Allies also trust. It would have been better for the revolution in Bavaria if Kurt Eisner had declined to be the symbol of the new order, for a Prime Minister of the race of the Jews was intolerable to aristocrat and peasant alike.
Kurt Eisner was not a politician, as I have already said. He was an artist in words. He was a Bohemian in habits. He loved to frequent the cafés. He could not in his new office drop at once the habits and interests of a lifetime. Infinitely illuminating of the man’s tastes and political judgment is his first act after taking office. It was the reorganization of the theatre of Munich! He was not able to keep separate the two sides of his life, the social and the political, as wiser men would have done. He mixed the beer and tobacco and gossip of the café with the work, organization and government of the council chamber. Many of his followers and helpers copied his ways. The young men who served him ought to have been allowed to continue playing billiards in the Café Stéfanie. Most of them were unfit for the great responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon them. Similar to the experience of Lenin and of most of the other Socialist leaders who had power suddenly thrust upon them was that of Kurt Eisner, who became the prey of revolution-profiteers, place-hunters, adventurers, insincere men and women who professed the new political creed as eagerly as they held the old. “This sort of thing,” said the great Lincoln solemnly, “will ultimately test the strength of our democratic institutions.” It has tainted their reputation already.
At the International Kurt Eisner was prime favourite with the French delegates because he was so bitter and unsparing in his attacks on Imperial Germany. He was not a great orator, but he impressed his audience with the passionate sincerity of every word he spoke. It was one of his speeches in Berne which was said to have determined his murderer, the young Count Arco, to kill him. It concerned the German prisoners of war who were then, four months after the war, still held back in France. Eisner tried to explain the French point of view in the matter. He was represented in Germany as having approved of it. It was felt to be intolerable. He was shot dead. And the shot made a martyr of a man, amiable, kind, gifted, slovenly in dress and habit, who had already outlived his usefulness to the Revolution and was about to resign, and who might have retired to some café and talked and smoked his life away to its happy and unimportant end. For me he is an interesting memory; but I have to confess to the faint lingering of a feeling of resentment, the feeling I have always been unable to conquer for that type of pacifist, to be found in every country, who tries to absorb for his own government the entire responsibility for the war.
It is impossible to name all the brilliant and capable women who attended this Conference. Amongst them was Miss Crystal Macmillan, tall and “bonny” and Scottish, the lawyer of the Conference, born to confound the illogical male; Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, vivacious, eloquent and warm; Frau Herzka of the mischievous smile and the everlasting cigarette; Mademoiselle Gobat, the gifted daughter of the renowned Swiss pacifist; Mademoiselle Melan from France, whose wonderful speech electrified the assembly and melted to tears the hardest pro-Ally and to softness the bitterest pro-German; and a host of others from the four corners of the earth, women whose names are household words in their respective countries. It was a good Conference, and gave direction to the thoughts and impulses of many who would otherwise have struggled in vain against the national psychology, and beaten their idealism to death against the almost indestructible barbed wires of national hates and prejudices.