Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life (Vol. 2 of 2)Suttner, Bertha von
History
Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life (Vol. 2 of 2)
Suttner, Bertha von
Peace; Suttner, Bertha von, 1843-1914; Women -- Austria -- Biography
Lawyer Luzatti was the first to take the platform, and he gave us a
biographical sketch of Federigo Sclopis. He eulogized his services,
and particularized as most glorious the part he played as chairman of
the Alabama Court of Arbitration. Then the vice president of the Roman
Senate, who is also chairman of the Roman Peace Society, spoke, and he
was followed by our Frédéric Passy. He had been in his youth a friend
of Sclopis’s, and was therefore able to tell much that was fresh and
interesting about the life of the great man.
The meeting was over at noon. The rest of the day was devoted to
social intercourse and the Exposition. Such visitors as had any taste
for art were here afforded more delights than are often found in
displays of this kind, for the galleries of sculpture and painting are
better filled than usual, and in a great edifice, built like a
coliseum, an orchestra of two hundred artists gave wonderful concerts.
But if I prove unable to tell much about the Exposition in general,
who will blame a member of the Congress for that? Here old friends are
discovered and new and congenial acquaintances are made, and this fact
serves to promote serious conversation; so the Exposition park, with
its many pavilions, is neglected; you sit down with your comrades
round a café table and talk of the things that are in your heart. The
manifesto first of all, but also everything else that is going on in
the world; among other things, the Dreyfus affair, which just at this
moment every one has more or less in mind. A delegate from Paris,
Gaston Moch, who himself had been a cavalry officer and had served in
the same corps with the exile, has much interesting information to
give. Even as early as 1894 he had looked behind the scenes in the
affair and had realized that the Jewish officer would not be endured
on the general staff. A peculiar thing was also told us: In the summer
of 1894, and thus before the charge was brought against Dreyfus, _Le
Journal_ published a novel as a feuilleton, in which a plot for the
extermination of an unpopular comrade was devised and carried out: the
smuggling into the intelligence bureau of a forged document and the
like,—a whole chain of intrigues such as was actually adopted against
the innocent man, just as if Paty, Henry, and the rest had taken the
novel as a pattern to go by.
On Monday, the twenty-sixth, the delegates met for their first session
in the Palazzo Carignan. The splendor of the Italian princely palaces
is well known. The hall where we met is of sheer gold; the wall
coverings are of gold, the doors and window shutters heavily gilded;
adjoining, and also glittering with gold, is the historic chamber in
which Victor Emmanuel was born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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