Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [165]
Delegates were uncomfortably aware of the conscience of the world over their shoulder in the person of a large “groupe du high-life pacifique” who had descended upon The Hague as observers. Expecting nothing but failure, the Conference had decided upon closed sessions from which the press was rigidly excluded. It proved a hopeless maneuver, since the press was led by W. T. Stead in person, acting as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Through importunate interviews and his myriad personal connections he was able to publish a daily chronicle of the Conference on a special page made available to him by the Dagblad, leading newspaper of The Hague. The delegates devoured it, all the other correspondents depended on it and the peace propagandists spread its news abroad to their home societies. Succumbing to the inevitable the Conference opened its meetings to the press.
Leading the observers was Baroness von Suttner, acting as correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna. Convinced that May 18 was an “epoch making date in the history of the world,” she earnestly dispensed tea and talk to the delegates and conferred on strategy with D’Estournelles, Beernaert and her other friends. Ivan Bloch came from Russia with trunks full of copies of his book for distribution. He gave lectures with lantern slides for the public and receptions for the delegates combining excellent suppers with pictures and charts on the development of firearms. Dr. Benjamin Trueblood, Quaker secretary of the American Peace Society, came from Boston, and Charles Richet, editor of La Revue Scientifique and director of the French Peace Society, from Paris. The Queen of Rumania under her pen name, Carmen Sylva, sent a poem. Mme Selenka of Munich brought a pacifist petition signed by women of eighteen countries; a Belgian petition with 100,000 and a Dutch petition with 200,000 signatures were submitted. Andrew White found himself inundated by people with “plans, schemes, nostrums, notions and whimsies of all sorts” and by floods of pamphlets and books, letters, sermons and telegrams, petitions, resolutions, prayers and blessings. Yet behind the cranks he sensed evidence of a feeling “more earnest and widespread than anything I had dreamed.”
Count Münster on the other hand was disgusted. “The Conference has brought here the political riffraff of the entire world,” he wrote to Bülow, “journalists of the worst type such as Stead, baptized Jews like Bloch and female peace fanatics like Mme de Suttner.… All this rabble, actively supported by Young Turks, Armenians, and Socialists into the bargain, are working in the open under the aegis of Russia.” He saw Stead as “a proved agent in the pay of Russia” and the proceedings on the whole as a Russian plot to nullify Germany’s military advantage. Even in his native land, however, the “rabble” found an echo when a committee of Reichstag deputies, professors and writers urged support of the aims of the Conference. Although opposed to any arrangement that could “even to infinitesimal degree lower Germany’s position among nations,” it hoped for some result to relieve Europe of the burden of armament taxation and to prevent the outbreak of wars.
Feeling themselves the cynosure of the world’s hope, the delegates began to feel the stirring of a desire not to disappoint it. After the first two weeks of work, reported Pauncefote, they “became interested in spite of themselves.” Some, at least, began to want to succeed, from “amour-propre” as van Karnebeek, the Netherlands delegate, said, if from nothing else. Some, affected by the coming together of so many nations, began to look ahead to “a federation of the nations of Europe.… That is the dream that begins to rise at The Hague. Europe must choose either to pursue the dream—or anarchy.”
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