Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [147]
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little swinish eyes;
When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,
That is the time of peril—the time of the Truce of the Bear!…
Suspicion of Russia’s motive and cynical speculations were ample. The leading question was, had France, Russia’s ally, been consulted in advance? Since disarmament presupposed satisfaction with the status quo and since France was vociferously unreconciled to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, the action of her ally posed, as The Times said, a “most surprising enigma.” From the French reaction it was clear she had not been consulted. “Et l’Alsace-Lorraine?” was l’Intransigeant’s one-line summary. Nevertheless many felt that coming at a time when “the intolerable pretensions and immeasurable ambitions” of Anglo-Saxon imperialism were agitating everyone s nerves and when the maintenance of peace was becoming more and more a “miracle of equilibrium,” the proposed conference was welcome.
Each group saw reflected in the Czar’s manifesto, as if in a magic mirror, the face of its particular opponent. To Germany it was obvious that if England did not consent to naval disarmament the Czar’s gesture would amount to “a sword stroke in water” and a few days later the Kaiser pronounced his decisive dictum, “Our future lies upon the ocean.” The British saw the major problem in Germany’s naval ambitions. Socialists everywhere were sure that whatever the Russian motive had been, considering the cruelties of Czarist oppression, it was not love of humanity. The German Socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht pronounced it a “fraud.” Many peace advocates considered it a response to the Spanish-American War, which seemed to them a prelude to world disaster. Many Europeans were convinced by the taking of the Philippines of the necessity of curbing American expansion. Americans themselves were not averse to the thought that the Czar had been prompted by their victory over Spain. Speaking for the anti-imperialists, Godkin sadly noted that the “splendid summons” came at a time when the United States was more deeply committed to “the military spirit and idea of forcible conquest” than ever before in her history.
The puzzle of motive remained. One explanation widely favored was that Nicholas had acted less for humanity than from a human desire to forestall the Kaiser, who was believed to be planning a similar proclamation, urbi et orbi, on his forthcoming visit to Jerusalem.
Colonel Henry’s suicide in the Dreyfus Affair soon absorbed public attention and ten days later the world gasped again when the Empress Elizabeth was assassinated by an Anarchist. Americans were preoccupied in welcoming home the regiments from Cuba, and the British with Kitchener’s march to Khartoum. From September on, the air darkened with the prospect of war between England and France; Fashoda, as the German Ambassador happily remarked, seemed to have obliterated the memory of Alsace-Lorraine. Peace was crowded out as a sensation.
Not, however, to the dedicated disciples of the peace movement in Europe and America, whom the Czar’s summons had electrified. Among the best known of these was Baroness Bertha von Suttner, author of the anti-war novel Die Waffen Nieder (“Put Down Your Arms”), which Tolstoy called the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of its cause. When the Baroness’ husband came home waving the newspaper, like Emma Goldman bringing the news of Homestead, she was transported with joy. Letters of congratulation soon poured in from fellow workers in the International Peace Bureau,