The publisher had no cause to regret his audacity: to-day the novel is circulated by hundreds of thousands and has been translated into a dozen languages. From this quite unexpected success I draw only one conclusion: the idea which permeates the book was to the taste of the public. In spite of the editors’ fears that the warlike German public would take no interest in the idea of peace, it was shown that this idea is cherished in wide circles—even in military circles; for from these too there came to me many tokens of appreciation. When a musical note sounds strongly in a room, this does not demonstrate so much the fullness of the tone as the favorable acoustic properties of the room. The spirit that usually obtains in newspaper offices, in theatrical directorates (as a generality, in managements of all sorts), is usually behind the times with regard to the wants of those masses who are in each case concerned: judgments are formed there according to the state of public opinion as it made itself felt ten or twenty years ago; but meanwhile public opinion itself, in its uninterrupted transformation, has progressed to another stage. So I am ready to believe that a book against war, appearing at the beginning of the seventies, when the intoxication of victory still effervesced in Germany and the wrathful clamor for revenge still raged in France, would have had no success whatever. The cult of arms, too, had to attain those huge dimensions whereby it has since then harnessed the peoples under its heavy yoke, it had to have brought the world to the brink of ruin, in order that the watchword “Away with Weapons” might find so powerful an echo. Every day brought me reviews from far and near,—feuilletons and editorials. Bartholomäus Carneri published a ten-column article in the _Neue Freie Presse_, J. V. Widmann a series of five feuilletons in the _Bund_. I received criticisms from Russia, where the book appeared in five different translations,—one of them authorized by me,—criticisms from America, from England, from the Scandinavian countries, where even in its first year translations were made. I was now brought into living touch with all those who were connected with the peace movement, or who, having had their attention drawn to the existence of such a movement by my book, were now joining it. The following letter afforded me especial pleasure, The inventor of dynamite wrote me: Dear Baroness and Friend: I have just finished reading your admirable masterpiece. We are told that there are two thousand languages—1999 too many—but certainly there is not one in which your delightful work should not be translated, read, and studied. How long did it take you to write this marvel? You shall tell me when next I have the honor and happiness of pressing your hand—that amazonian hand which so valiantly makes war on war.