Agent of Peace

by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme

  Aletta had wanted her to go back to Holland but Emily said that it was impossible for several reasons: the English committee were dead against her being there; it was known that Chrystal Macmillan could only work with ‘machinelike subordinates’; her own bad health necessitated her keeping very warm; and getting a permit was expensive and impossible. She told Aletta she felt inclined to join the Ford Commission if it could get the free passport facilities which it had asked for. It was her hope that the International Bureau and the Ford Commission would work together.

  She also told Aletta of the work of Rosa Genoni in Milan, who she felt was very brave to have had an appeal printed privately and spread amongst the crowd on May Day, and of the Italian women of Zurich who were being organised to do the same. Emily said she had written the Zurich people a little greeting and suggested that they should revive the old custom of choosing ‘Peace’ for the Queen of May, and should carry the symbolic figure through the streets of the city.

  Although in her Journal Emily tells us some of the things she was doing she omitted to mention that she, along with forty-three delegates representing socialist parties in eight countries, attended the Socialist Conference at the little alpine village of Kienthal, known as the Second Zimmerwald Conference.15 These radical Socialist Conferences were organised by Robert Grimm, a Swiss Deputy, with the idea of replacing the annual meetings of the Socialist Second International that had been cancelled because of the war and were meant to be in the cause of peace. Such representatives of European socialist parties as could get to Switzerland attended. No one could come from Britain but both Lenin and Trotsky were at the first conference and Lenin at the second. It was at these conferences that Lenin propounded his revolutionary theory and this caused a split. His caucus was referred to as the Zimmerwald Left; Grimm and the majority were referred to as the Zimmerwald Centre. Emily was there as an observer and boldly signed the register as such.

  Notes

  * Sir John Simon later held the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary. He was a renowned chess player.

  1. Kaminski, Emily Hobhouse – The Radicalization of a Ministering Angel (PhD thesis, University of Connecticut) p. 299, card EH to Aletta Jacobs, 26 October 1915. ‘Lucy and I quite enjoyed being undressed at Tilbury. It was a new experience and as I tell her she will one day relate the adventure to her grandchildren.’, Aletta Jacobs archives

  2. Jane Addams papers, Swarthmore College

  3. Ibid.

  4. TNA FO 163590/82506 enc B, Kaminski 300

  5. J.C. Smuts to EH, JHB collection

  6. Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam

  7. Ibid.

  8. TNA FO 163590/82506 enc. C; Kaminski p. 303

  9. TNA FO187392/83506 enc. A

  10. TNA FO 372/894 no.127435; Kaminski p. 303

  11. EH to Aletta Jacobs, Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam

  12. Ibid., 12 February 1916

  13. Oxford and Asquith, p. 143

  14. Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam

  15. Noble, War on War; list of attendance at conference, JHB collection

  5

  PRELUDE TO THE JOURNEY

  O n returning from Kienthal, Emily addressed a propaganda rally organised by the Berne International Union for Permanent Peace. It was reported in the Swiss newspaper Der Bund that she had reviewed the Peace Resolutions of The Hague Women’s Congress.1 When Evelyn Grant Duff, the British Minister, read this report under the title Die Frauen und der Friede [Women and Peace], he was furious. He told the Foreign Office Emily had breached her signed declaration (Emily understood this paper was only for Italy, and, for once, some at the Foreign Office agreed). Should he revoke her passport? he asked. He said that peace propaganda at the present time was ‘open disloyalty.’2

  Emily was now labelled in the Foreign Office, perhaps fairly for once, as a ‘peace crank’. ‘Perhaps,’ it argued, ‘by revoking her passport she would leave Switzerland and she might be frightened into silence …’ After twenty-four days, on 27 May 1916 British Foreign Secretary Grey authorised Grant Duff to withdraw Emily’s passport.3

  However, by this time Emily was working on a new project. She had seen an article in The Times (which was available in every country, even during the war) about Ruhleben, the British civilian internees camp outside Berlin, and she thought she would very much like to go to see it, and she would also like to go to Belgium to see conditions there for herself. With this in mind she approached the German Ambassador, Romberg. He was sympathetic and we know from the German records that he went to the very top – to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg – to ask for permission.4

  It took a long time to get a reply. Emily fretted away her time at Gunten, a mountain resort near Berne, writing letters to the German Embassy to keep the matter in mind. In the end she was permitted to go to Belgium but denied permission to go to the internment camp. However, Romberg advised her to apply again when in Brussels as he knew the man in charge would be sympathetic.5

  Grant Duff, meanwhile, was having difficulty locating Emily as the Swiss police were forbidden to give out the addresses of foreigners. On 5 June his staff at last managed to find her. He then sent Emily what he called a ‘casual’ message requesting her to call at the Legation on an unspecified morning. He told the Foreign Office that he made the message deliberately vague ‘so as not to arouse her suspicion’.6

  Emily was not deceived. She wrote in her Journal:7

  Thus in the summer of this year 1916 on finding myself again in Berne I called on von Romberg and with my vision ever in my mind’s depths that I must go to Germany. I suddenly, while sitting in his room, saw in his face my opened door. To a man so sympathetic and broadminded as Baron von Romberg it was easy to explain my feelings and points of view and bit-by-bit I carried him with me. Yet I shall never forget his start as of a new light penetrating his mind when I said to him ‘I have no Enemies.’ It was evident that he made up his mind that I should go – and promised his influence with Berlin.

  It took time, and patience on my part was necessary awaiting the reply – he himself in a visit to Berlin pleaded my cause. My request was grounded on an immediate desire to learn the truth in the interests of humanity and peace – and on larger issues to accentuate the fact of the brotherhood of mankind – the highest internationalism – Christian love and amity – to accentuate this as unalterable in the darkest moment of the World’s history. I know that he ‘understood’ and that his personal sympathy and high-minded belief in my Mission prevailed and gained me the end I so desired. Particularly I asked to study the condition of non-combatants in Belgium, our Civilians in Ruhleben, and the food supply in Germany and its effects on Women and Children.

  But time had elapsed and I waited a good month at Gunten and Berne in suspense often so weak and ill that I hoped with my body a refusal would come, though my mind and spirit knew it would be ‘Yes’. And one evening, late, the letter come which I knew would settle it. I was still weak and ill and so shrank from the physical effort and strain that must be involved that for full half an hour I let the letter lie unopened. With my weak heart and difficulty of bearing any agitation I first went to bed feeling that only there in complete repose could I face the news. I was a great coward that night. Herr Schubert, (1st Secy) wrote so kindly to tell me the ‘good news’ and there I lay in terror of what might lie before me in Germany physically – afterwards at home morally. I faced the bare fact that I had foreseen and longed for, for a year and nine months and I shrank from it.

  The conditions had not come and that meant still further delay. During this period came Mr Grant Duff’s letter, the British Minister, commanding my presence at the Embassy. I knew that answers to the queries he would make would involve disclosure of my plan to which he (with no right) would be averse, and that therefore I must go at once or not at all. Therefore I hurried down to von Romberg and explained the position which he, fully aware of Grant Duff’s idiosyncrasies, wholly understood and
my passport (a humanitarian one) was made out and given to me and I was told the conditions were come and that I was to go to Belgium and be handed over to an Official at the border …

  Notes

  1. TNA FO 372/894

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. German records

  5. Ibid.

  6. Kaminski p. 304

  7. EH Journal vol. 1 pp. 10–12

  6

  EMILY’S JOURNAL: WARTIME JOURNEY ACROSS GERMANY

  W e now get to an interesting part of Emily’s Journal.1 The Journal records day-to-day events, but was written later. Although Emily had an excellent memory, she had to leave her notebooks in Switzerland or they would have been confiscated. They are not preserved with her papers:

  We were in a hurry because I must leave Berne in four hours to catch the train to Basel and I had to pack and make arrangements for Phoebe [the maid she had with her in Rome]. In the hurry therefore I was never told what ‘conditions’ of my visit Belgium were laid down and this might have made a difference in my plans had I known.

  I was hastily introduced to young Von Rosenberg the courier who undertook to meet me next morning at Basel with the motor and I was directed to a quiet and unknown temperance Inn, the Blue Cross ‘Blaukreizhaus’ which lay in a quiet street. Here, after a wretched supper and a most fatiguing and agitating day I exhausted myself by diligently washing all labels off my bottles and pill-boxes, etc, not an easy task and as it turned out quite unnecessary in my case. I posted a letter in Berne before leaving, to Mr Grant Duff saying I had received his note but was leaving Berne for a trip – nevertheless ‘Immediately on my return I shall have much pleasure in calling at the Embassy’.

  [June 7th] Precisely – with German punctuality – at 7.20 a.m. as advised the Courier drove up to the Inn and found me with equal punctuality standing on the threshold with my bags and baskets. They hoisted them into the car and off we went through the empty streets to the barrier some 4km distant. First there was the Swiss Custom[s] which opened my things very perfunctorily and then the long wooden arm of a level crossing was lifted a little. I slipped under and lo! we were in Germany. In a moment of time one’s whole mental orientation was changed. The foolishness of it all was startling. Nature had made no barrier – the earth and stones and grass were the same – one step only made the difference between the country of a friend and of an enemy! No barrier but man, or at least governments, had put up landmarks saying ‘here is all mine, there is all yours. Our interests are different and each must look after his own!’ But nature had made no barrier – a long level road swept through a green meadowland on both sides the same and the people actually speaking the same language. As Borngräber [German playwright] says in his Bergpredigt: ‘Away with frontiers, down with all landmarks. You on that side, you on this side – you are brothers and the World is your Fatherland.’ To me it was a wonderful moment and I felt as in a dream.

  Von Rosenberg, a nice youth, took my German phrase book and dictionary which I had begged leave to bring and with no sort of difficulty we passed the German Customs. The car slipped through and another kilometre or so slid by before we gained the little station now the terminus, for German trains no longer run into Basel – the line is cut. A wounded soldier with calm patient face was being carried in a stretcher and let up and down the platform in a baggage lift. I asked the same privilege – a wheeled chair was brought and I was pushed by genial German porters into the lift. Then they bought me a paper and we left for Cologne.

  The first thing I saw on opening the paper was the death of Kitchener* and the loss of the Hampshire. A crowd of memories rushed back upon me and I felt regret that I should not be able to make him learn (what however he knew well enough) that Belgium was not devastated and destroyed as he destroyed South Africa – the Free State and Transvaal. It was in any case a dramatic moment in which to have learnt of his death, and to the German mind I saw it meant a great deal. My opinion was that though no special military loss, Kitchener was a loss to peace-prospects being probably the only man in England who was impervious to public opinion and with shoulders broad enough to bear that hostile opinion if he thought we could gain no military decision and must make peace by negotiation.

  (Before leaving Switzerland I left all papers, money and directions with Gertrude Woker of 17 Riedweg, Berne, where also a good deal remains till the war is ended. She came to see me off and to both her family and the Kochers I owe much help and sympathy. I should also like to record Baron von Romberg’s thoughtful advice to me – his enemy – to consider well before going, lest afterwards it should compromise me in England. I took council on this point with my Swiss friends who all felt nothing but good would come of it.)

  Von Rosenberg left me alone in my compartment – of which I was glad – the train ran very smoothly and did not shake me and I could lie down. The country looked so fair and green and peaceful and prosperous, it was hard to reconcile it with press accounts which have coloured [sic] all minds. Officials in spite of my English appearance, and few Anglicized German phrases, were all so genial, helpful and courteous and indeed during the whole of my stay I never encountered one word or look of discordance – distinctly the reverse. Yet I could not be and was not taken for an American.

  We stopped at various large stations. Everywhere the people seemed busy and purposeful – cheerful and smiling (though no hilarity) but at the same time serious and calmly confident. There was no look of a beaten people nor of a people likely to be beaten. I wanted to buy the notorious War-bread** as a first step towards my study of the Food Question. I think it was at Offenburg that the opportunity came. A barrow at the station came down the line selling sandwiches, wines, mineral waters and such strawberries. I bought a large and substantial sandwich made of this bread and cheese – and some fruit. The sandwich cost half a mark, 6d [sixpence]. I usually give 4d [fourpence] in normal times in England, for a ham sandwich half the size. To my astonishment I found the bread delicious and from there to the end of my visit I eat it and enjoy it thoroughly. It agreed with me perfectly, far better than the bread of Italy, Switzerland or the Westminster Palace Hotel.

  At Wiesbaden we changed trains and had a good half hour so I invited Von Rosenberg to take tea with me. There were men waiters apparently robust and of military age. The tea was fairly good but no milk was provided, instead lemon was served. I asked for biscuits and a packet was brought and Von Rosenberg had spread bread and butter. The packet of biscuits lasted me a long time. The people looked well nourished. Our journey continued down the Rhine Valley that pretty, but I think over-rated scenery and so idealized by Turner. Fruit orchards bordered much of the way and the ripening cherries were being gathered by men and women, but chiefly women, with ladders against the trees. Here and there ex-soldiers (perhaps on leave) were working in the fields and once I saw a squad of men who were evidently prisoners-of-war also at work.

  It must have been towards seven o’clock when the towers and spire of Cologne rose above the plain and we drew up in the great station crowded with soldiers, kindly looking solid men, their physique struck me as very superior to that of our slim, ill-grown Tommies *. I had a steep flight of steps to climb at the station exit and when at last we got outside there was no conveyance of any sort to take us to the hotel. We had to wait a full half hour and I was thankful to sit down on my campstool. Soldiers, railway men and children stood about the groups. The children looked a bit ragged and unkempt (for Germany), about 15 of them came round me and I distributed chocolate amongst them which I had brought from Berne. I doubt if they were very hungry because oddly enough few of them began at once to eat it as children usually do. I had to teach them to say ‘Ich danke Ihnen’ for it, while the men standing about smiled genially. It was strange how calmly they took me, considering that young Von Rosenberg was not in uniform.

  It was necessary to order a cab from some stables so the delay was considerable before at last we drove off. At the entrance of the old b
ridge (I think a drawbridge) and guarded, a soldier mounted the box of the cab and we walked the horse across to the farther side where the soldier left us. Cologne is a garrison town and full of military. Opposite the cathedral was a quiet small hotel to which he took me and selected for me a quiet but very comfortable room. Charming, well-mannered and very pretty chambermaids who said ‘gnädige Frau’ every other moment.

  It was late, though still so light with our first experience of Summer Time, and I went down hungry to supper. I ordered soup and some rice pudding. It was my first experience too of short commons, for the good bowl of soup I expected turned out to be a wee cupful about the size of an after-lunch coffee cup. My inside felt distinctly aggrieved. But then usual three thinnish slices of bread were there and though no pudding appeared there was brought me a very few stewed cherries. So I went to bed while Von Rosenberg went to the town Commandant to explain my presence and assure him I should depart early next day. In Cologne, he said they were very particular, and I fancy they gave him some trouble there about me.

  I had a nasty ending to a long strange day. In my bedroom there were double windows but I did not know it. The outer one had cross bars which showed, the inner had none which made it invisible. I went to look out and thrust my head forward precipitately to gain the window with bars which I could see. I came in very violent contact with the inner glass which was invisible. The blow fell on the bridge of my nose and how it escaped being broken I do not know. I was stunned for some time but just roused myself enough to recollect the brandy in my bag and I rubbed that well on the place. But the pain to the whole face and brow was great. I thought of how Mamma did the very same thing and how it brought on the malignant cancer between the bones of her brow and nose and caused an agonizing death.