A POLITICAL PILGRIM IN EUROPE [Illustration: _Photograph by S. A. Chandler & Co._] A POLITICAL PILGRIM IN EUROPE BY Mrs. PHILIP SNOWDEN Author of “Through Bolshevik Russia” [Illustration] CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1921 To MY NOBLE AND HEROIC MOTHER CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION ix 1. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL 1 2. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (_continued_) 17 3. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (_concluded_) 38 4. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CONFERENCE 54 5. THE CONFERENCE OF WOMEN AT ZURICH 75 6. THE INTERNATIONAL AT LUCERNE 95 7. DYING AUSTRIA 103 8. AFTER ONE YEAR 128 9. MORE ABOUT RUSSIA 139 10. FROM RUSSIA BY SWEDEN AND GERMANY 155 11. CONCERNING THE JEWS 175 12. GEORGIA OF THE CAUCASUS 189 13. MORE ABOUT GEORGIA 215 14. HOME THROUGH THE BALKANS 228 15. THE DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY 237 16. MORE ABOUT IRELAND 254 CONCLUSION 271 INDEX 275 INTRODUCTION In these days everybody is writing his memories. Disappointed politicians decline to be forgotten. Successful and unsuccessful generals refuse to be neglected. People of all sorts and conditions insist on being heard. The most intimate affairs of a life are laid bare in order to arrest public attention. Intolerable to most is the fear that the world will go past him. Nobody will willingly let himself die. This is the conclusion to which one is driven by the publication during the last two years of a vast mass of autobiography. I am writing my own memoirs--two years of them. It never would have occurred to me unaided that they could be of the slightest interest to anybody. Friends have listened to my stories with interest, and public meetings on several occasions have, by their silence and attention during the telling, shown a certain pleasure in their recital; but only the insistence of a valued few has induced me to put some of them into a book. These are not the most interesting experiences of my life. The four years of the war could reveal much more, and better, if it were possible to write about those times. I doubt if I could--fully. The big experiences of life are seldom even spoken about, much less put down in black and white. Things happened during the war which are as sacred as the birth of a child or the death of a lover.