The public meeting, which took place on the first evening, brought together in the hall of the Sagebiel establishment an audience of five thousand of all ranks. Otto Ernst made the opening address. Then Richard Feldhaus recited a poem by Schmidt-Cabanis. And then Egidy. This was the first time I had ever heard him speak. Clear, assured, deliberate, vibrant, powerful. The real voice of command. “Be good!” is an injunction which is usually whispered mildly or spoken in an unctuous, preachifying tone; Egidy thundered it out like a command. The gist of his address was: We must grow into the unmilitary age which we are fighting to bring about. A new mode of thought must take possession of our inmost being. War predicates the hostile opposition of man to man. We must oppose this hostility and put in its place the feeling of solidarity (_Zusammengehörigkeit_). In this soil is to grow the natural equality of all people and all peoples. This equality of birth leads to the right of every one in the nation, and of every nation taken collectively, to determine its own career under the limitations made by the duties that each one has in turn toward the whole. In a certain sense we have already entered upon the warless age; but we do not realize its blessings because we have not the courage to meet the transformation. Egidy spoke also of other conflicts besides those of war: The conflict between employers and employees, between consumers and producers, must cease. To every person in the community must be assured a dignified existence. Then every conflict will cease. In the unions we already have the beginnings of it.... Credal relationships must become different. The faith of the individual must be respected, but the discrepant evaluation and persecution of individual forms of belief must cease. The French artillery captain, Gaston Moch, who was present at the Congress, was so delighted by the former Prussian lieutenant colonel that he subsequently published a book, _L’Ère sans violence_, in which he introduced Egidy’s doctrine and way of looking at things, together with several translations from his articles and speeches. At the second session I announced that a new adherent had joined us,—Jean Henri Dunant, the founder of the Geneva Convention of the Red Cross. I stated that he would use his influence in the Red Cross societies so as to work through them for our cause, especially in the Oriental nations, amongst whom the Red Cross numbered many adherents and to whom a special appeal was to be directed in all the Oriental languages. I presented the text of this appeal. Dunant had sent it to me with a request that I should give it my signature and win the sanction of the Congress. General Türr announced that he was prepared to procure its translation into Turkish and to have it disseminated. Here are a few extracts from my diary: