And when we all stood in the great arena listening to the explanations of the professor who was detailed by the government to guide us, that the gladiatorial contests were counted “the indispensable” for the Romans, we could not but say to each other, “And yet people have learned to dispense with them and to abhor them.” So if to-day many still count war indispensable, what does that prove? Or, again, many of us might make this observation: at bottom it was an innocent gratification to look on and see how a few dozen wrestlers—criminals at that, condemned to death—stretch each other on the sand or are killed by wild beasts, compared to that other custom of drilling millions of innocent men for the giant arena in which they are to be mangled and dashed to pieces not by lions and tigers but by artificial murdermachines.... In one of the little Pompeian houses an ancient inscription was still perceptible on the wall; our professor of archæology read it off: A WOE TO HIM WHO CANNOT LOVE A DOUBLE WOE TO HIM WHO WOULD PROHIBIT LOVE. Then the thought thrilled through me: O ye who would hinder us from working at the weaving of the band that is to gird all nations together in concord, ye who scoff at us because we would choke out hereditary hate, because we would fan the flame of the love of humanity—“a double woe to you!” The monthly from which the above extract is taken was published for eight years until the end of the century, when it was replaced by the _Friedenswarte_. The idea of issuing a periodical did not come from me. After the newspapers had spread the tidings of the founding of a Peace Society in Vienna and the part which it was to take in the approaching Congress, a young publisher in Berlin wrote me an enthusiastic letter in which he suggested the establishment of an organ for the new movement; he would publish it, I was asked to be editor in chief and to put my name on it as such. An eager devotee of the idea of peace since his earliest years, since he had for the first time seen the Vereshchágin pictures, he now desired to dedicate all his powers as a publicist to the cause of peace. His letter was burningly written, and I consented. From that day to this A. H. Fried has been my most zealous fellow-combatant. So then I stood in the midst of the young movement; I had a new Union to preside over, a review to edit, a regular correspondence to carry on with the colleagues whom I had gained in Rome, and once more my life and activities were filled with something which I recognized as “the one important thing.” PART SEVEN 1892–1898 XXXII HOME AND FRIENDS We two · Business troubles · Deaths · Family life at Castle Stockern · Home theater · The twelfth of June · Visit of Prince André Dadiani