Ethel Snowden

“ Look at Berlin. Would you think that a city so full of woes could find time and heart to be so clean and trim? And yet, compared with the Berlin of pre-war days, she is soiled and stained almost beyond knowledge to those who knew and loved her well. Our hotels are crowded with rich gourmands chiefly from foreign lands; but go into our little homes, the homes of the miners in the Ruhr, the homes of the workers in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hamburg, and see in the wan, pinched faces of the children and their mothers what the peace is doing to those whom the war did not kill. ”

“ Russia, Germany, France, England, America—all will go the same way to ruin unless the great awakening comes soon, and men learn that the bonds which unite nations are indissoluble, or are cut by them at their own peril.
It is needful that all should become, if not pilgrims, priests and prophets of peace and good will. It is vital to do so. Communism cannot save mankind if it be imbued, as so far it has been, with the old bad spirit of hate. Capitalism is failing before our eyes. Militarism has failed. ”

“ The application of this belief to war was clear: Militarism could not be destroyed by militarism even though the princes of this world declared that it could.
I had read enough history to prove to myself the mad folly of wars. All of which never clouded my apprehension of the fact that war may be an evil and yet, by reason of vicious policies and pledges over a number of years, become the lesser evil of two wrongs in the eyes of many wise and good men and women. To choose between the evil and the good is simple. To decide which of two evil things is the lesser evil is anything but simple. ”

“ They are a race of artists with gifts of this sort for mankind that have not yet been dreamt of. Russia is not Bolshevism. This hard, cruel phase will pass, is already passing. What the next chapter in Russian history will be who can tell? What Russia’s contribution will be to the world’s political problems who will dare to prophesy?
A generation is growing up in Russia which has seen fearful things and done dreadful deeds. Its children have grown weary, toying with corpses. But in spite of that I am sure that Russia will justify the brightest hopes of her. ”

“ Instead of one big war there will be twenty little ones—war never ceasing, war for crude material things. Art, music, literature, the drama—these will decay. First class artists will go to America where they can be paid. Grass will grow in decayed cities and ignorant peasants will instal themselves in the seats of power. We shall have restored the age of bigotry and superstition. Central Europe will not merely be Balkanized; it will be atomized. Our horizon will decline to the level of each man’s immediate family, if he has a conscience. ”

“ I returned from my travels reinforced a thousand-fold in the conviction of the necessity of internationalism if the world is to be saved; with this in addition, that the present problem for mankind is not to persuade the world to internationalism. It is rather to teach it the right kind of internationalism. Internationalism of one sort or another is as inevitable as the rising of the sun. The League of Nations is the second embodiment of an idea which held great masses of men and women before even the first, the Workers’ International, was born. ”

“ The soil of Poland is very rich. If her armies could be disbanded and set to work upon the fields, Poland could very speedily feed not only her own starving children but millions of other children also. When one of the organizations for relief heard from the beautiful Princess Sapieha the story of the appalling suffering of Poland’s children, the wholly sympathetic committee, whilst promising help, felt bound to point out that it was like pouring money into a sieve to send it to a country for ever challenging the fortunes of war. ”

“ Soft and slow of speech, but of quick intelligence and with the clearest outlook, his true friend would none the less wish him a happier fate than to be Minister of State in a country so full of tangled problems as Russia in these dreadful days. Making beautiful music to a company of congenial souls, the samovar steaming merrily and the song going gaily behind warm, close curtains, in the light of a bright fire, till the dawn on the horizon told of the coming day, is the proper life for this gentle Minister, whom to know is to like. ”

“ In the realms of art, science, invention, commerce, industry, economics and finance nationalism is languishing towards its inevitable decay—if it is not already dead. Political internationalism is destined to crown the structure of the world society of the future as surely as the night follows the day.
But what kind of political internationalism is it to be? That is the question. Heaven forbid that it should be the anti-nationalism of Lenin, wrongly called internationalism, which will prevail over the earth. That would be to menace too alarmingly the truly valuable differences amongst men. ”

“ It is astounding how many otherwise perfectly intelligent human beings believe Bolshevism to be an emanation from the Jewish brain. Trotsky is a Jew, Radek is a Jew, Zinoviev is a Jew, Balabanova is a Jew, Bela Kun is a Jew, therefore all Jews are Bolshevik and all Bolsheviks are Jews; which is absurd! As a matter of fact, only two out of the seventeen or eighteen members of the Bolshevik Cabinet at the time of the British Labour delegation’s visit to Russia were Jews. The most commanding personality in Russia at this hour is not a Jew. ”

“ Some day a writer will appear who will tell the true story of this modern Babel; but he will have to wait until this generation is dead and gone before he publishes it, or else commit suicide when it appears! It housed the most extraordinary medley of princes and peasants, dukes and dockers, ex-kings and Socialist presidents ever collected in one building since the Great War turned the world upside down! In the wake of these illustrious or dangerous personalities crept that indigenous growth of the centre of diplomatic life and political activity, the political agent or spy. ”

“ Neither were the jewelled and fragrant women who used to sip its sparkling wines, whilst they waited in the ante-chamber to Paris for their visa for the Heaven of their dreams. The war produced large numbers of this feminine type. I knew several of them. Sometimes beautiful, often wealthy, in spite of fallen money values, they played their game of coquetry in Berne to while away the time till better things came in sight. The ghastly tragedy of famine passed them by. The sufferings of the war left them cold. The colossal spectacle of Europe’s downfall was nothing to them. ”

“ To be watched by dozens of pairs of envious eyes with every mouthful of the simple food one ate filled one with cold horror at the thought of what it implied, a slowly dying city of 21⁄4 millions of people. For the rest of my time in Vienna I contrived to share my meals with strangers whenever it was possible to do so without hurting their pride. And I found that pride is a plant which rarely survives where hunger and cold have starved the soil for several years.
What sad sights were there for the observant in the streets and cafés of the once gay city of Vienna! ”

“ I am still profoundly convinced that the war went on two years too long, and two years more than were necessary. Time will prove me right or wrong. I am content to wait.
But I cannot wait, and no patriot in this country can afford to wait, for the Peace to come right. He must begin to make it come right. The imperialists of Europe are poisoning the world. Into the pit which they are digging for one another they are destined to fall themselves, dragging the innocent with them. ”

“ Amongst these new acquaintances was a lady I first met in Geneva at the conference of the Save the Children Fund. The Countess Wilamowitz-Moellendorf is a lovely woman of about thirty-two years of age, tall and graceful as a lily, with a lily’s whiteness in her skin, and a lily’s pale gold in her hair. She has a soft voice and a gentle blue eye, which occasionally sparkles with pure mischief. She possesses the elegance and simplicity of manner of the ancien régime, to which she belongs, and has the gift of humour, suggestive of the Irish strain that is actually hers. ”

“ I do not charge the Bolshevik leaders with wilfully contriving terror and torture. I do not suggest they wallowed delightedly in the blood of fellow creatures. Ignorant and lustful brutes, self-elevated to power in remote towns and villages, did deeds in the name of the Soviet which make distressing reading. The official Terror of the Government was aimed at their own firm establishment and not carried on for the mere pleasure of killing. But the Communist philosophy predicates terror, and advocates its ruthless use against the adversary in the supposed interests of a glorious eventuality. ”

“ The Trotsky who raised the banner of universal peace at Brest-Litovsk, the prince of pacifists, became the prince of militarists, the great war lord of a hundred and fifty millions of people stung to arms again. The marvellously revived and sternly disciplined armies of Trotsky have performed miracles of soldier-craft which have filled an astonished world with reluctant admiration, tossing aside their enemies, Judenitch, Petlura, Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel, like terriers in a barn full of rats. ”

“ There was no empty seat in the whole of the train. I had a first-class ticket, but I passed the night in the corridor sitting on the end of my suit-case. French trains are always super-heated. There had been no time for food in Paris. Hunger, thirst and sleeplessness made that night memorable to me. And as I have already shown, Geneva was not the end. There was the long wait in the city and the seven hours’ journey to Berne to follow the sleepless night from Paris to Belgarde. But it is marvellous what can be done and endured if one is only determined enough. ”

“ This it was suggested weakened his usefulness to the new-born Austrian democracy.
The Hungarian aristocrats are charming people to meet in a drawing-room. They are handsome and clever and full of friendliness; but cruel as the grave when their passions are aroused and credulous as babies where their material interests are affected. The vilest murderer in the service of the Revolution, the pervert and madman Szamuely, was more than equalled in ferocity and blood-thirstiness by certain delicate Hungarian ladies I know with the best blood of Hungary in their veins. ”

“ They have raised for themselves a lasting monument in the affections of the Austrian people, and have set an example of practical internationalism which should shame all those whose faith in blockades and tariffs and embargoes and prohibitions is not yet dead. But for the Swiss and the Americans Austria’s plight would have been beyond hope, and the world would be the poorer by the loss of one of the most cultivated, artistic and lovable races which have contributed to the happiness and elevation of mankind. Very late in the day the men of Paris have moved towards the relief of Vienna. ”

“ In every big city and in countless little villages of Europe their work has been quietly and persistently carried on, without noise and self-advertisement, with no looking for praise, and no expectation of reward. It began with the war. It has been carried on during the peace. Many workers have died of their labours, poisoned with typhus germs or collapsed from overwork. Hundreds of thousands of sufferers will live to bless them, who would have died but for their work. Countless little children have been saved alive or preserved from stunted manhood or womanhood through them. ”

“ Ah! you English people, you do not understand, you never will understand Ireland. In your imagination you have peopled our island with devils and conceive it to be your duty to exterminate the plague. ‘The dirty Irish’ is the way you think about us. Hunting down Irishmen is by some Englishmen regarded as legitimate sport. I am a native of Cork. I am not a Sinn Feiner. I do not want to see Ireland cut loose from the Empire. ”

“ You go everywhere—to Petrograd, Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Geneva, but never to Warsaw or Cracow. Why not? We need you in Poland more than they need you in Tiflis. Surely Poland has as good a claim as Georgia?” I had praised the hills by which we were surrounded. “We have beautiful mountains in Poland, far more beautiful than these,” he said, waving his arm in the direction of the Alps, shimmering in the mists of a summer morning. “Our mountains are wild and solemn. And very, very beautiful”—his voice grew tender. “Come to Poland and read Heine in the Polish hills.” ”