Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [182]
So burdened, the nations assembled on June 15, 1907. The first decade of the new century, now three quarters old, was already marked by three characteristics: a bursting economy, a burst of creative vigor in the arts, and the sound of steady “drumming like a noise in dreams.” For all who did not hear it there were many who did, not all with dread. In the German Navy it was the custom of officers to drink to “The Day.” At a spa near Bayreuth a group of German students and young naval officers made friends with a visiting Englishman and “in the friendliest and most amiable fashion discussed with me the coming struggle between our two countries.” They argued that every empire had its day. England’s decline must come as had that of Spain, Holland and France. Who should fill the throne but the strong, wise, noble and gifted nation whose development had been the outstanding factor of the Nineteenth Century and who now stood “poised for heroic enterprise.” Germany seemed not the only one so poised. The new aggressive powers exhibited by Japan and the United States convinced Europe that these nations were approaching a clash. Following the furor caused in Japan by the California Exclusion Act, both these nations believed it themselves. “The tendency is toward war,” wrote Secretary Root, “not now but in a few years’ time.”
The prospect was viewed by many of the ruling class more matter-of-factly than tragically. Lord Lansdowne, opposing the Old Age Pensions Bill in the House of Lords, said it would cost as much as a great war and the expense of the South African War was a better investment. “A war, terrible as are its consequences, has at any rate the effect of raising the moral fibre of the country” whereas the measure under debate would weaken it. And if the prospect of war appalled the spokesmen of the working class, violence as such did not. Georges Sorel in his Reflections on Violence in 1908 claimed that proletarian violence exercised in the interest of class war was a “fine heroic thing,” a civilizing agent that could save the world from barbarism.
The Second Conference was larger in size, longer in duration and more voluminous in results than the First, but otherwise not very different. It lasted through October—for four months instead of two—and produced thirteen conventions, as compared to the previous three. Because the United States had insisted on the presence of the Latin-American states, much to the distaste of the European powers, 44 nations and 256 delegates were present as compared to 26 and 108 at the First Conference. The larger number made it necessary to meet in the Ridderzaal, seat of the Netherlands Parliament in the center of The Hague, rather than in the Huis ten Bosch in its lovely park. Many of the delegates were the same as before; many of the notable ones of 1899 were missing. Bourgeois of France and Beernaert of Belgium again headed their respective delegations, but Münster, Pauncefote and De Staal were dead; Andrew White had not returned; Mahan and Fisher were absent in body if not in spirit. The new president was again a Russian, M. Nelidov, an elderly diplomat like his predecessor whose voice and manner revealed his lack of sympathy with the Conference and who, being in ill health most of the time, left command of the Russian delegation to the pompous Professor de Martens who himself suffered from gout and was often confined to his room. The Russian delegation seemed divided among itself with its members quartered in separate hotels.
Baron d’Estournelles, who was to share the Nobel Peace Prize with Beernaert two years later, was again present for France, and Professor Zorn, looking yellow and emaciated, from Germany. Among the newcomers were Count Tornielli, representing Italy,