Well, we know to-day that it was indeed his fate to be dispatched into the next world by a Japanese mine. Almost the first news that startled the world at the time of the Russo-Japanese War was that of the sinking of the ironclad _Petropavlovsk_, which ran on a mine. Vereshchágin, pencil in hand, was on board, sketching. A shock, a cry of anguish from eight hundred throats, and down into the depths sank ship and crew! Vereshchágin’s intention was to observe and depict the events of the most modern of wars—what would those pictures have turned out to be? Perhaps it would have been as impossible to finish them as it was to reproduce the scene at Plevna. There are horrors which incapacitate the artist’s hand or darken the observer’s mind. The Russo-Japanese War brought the general madness to a head. Vereshchágin’s vibrant artist spirit would perhaps have been the first to become mad if he had ever tried to paint the scenes which have been enacted on barbed wire and in wolf-pits (_trous-de-loup_). A few years later—let me here complete my personal recollections of Vereshchágin—I met him a second time. He was giving in Vienna an exhibition of his series of Napoleon pictures. It is said that Emperor William II, on seeing one of these paintings, remarked to him: “With these, dear master, you are battling against war more effectually than all the Peace Congresses in the world.” Nevertheless, I believe that the artist’s intention was not in the least to engage in that sort of battle. He wanted to be true. He did not hate war at all; he found in it the excitements of the chase. “I have many times killed men in battle,”—these are his own words,—“and I can say from experience that the excitement, as well as the feeling of satisfaction and contentment, that comes after killing a man is precisely like the sensation which comes when one has brought down uncommonly large game.” XLII THE COMMITTEE MEETING AT BRUSSELS AND ITS RESULTS Committee meeting of the Interparliamentary Union at Brussels · Letter from Senator Trarieux · Address to Gladstone · Address to the French and Italian deputies · Warning as to the duties of the Union · The “inevitable war” between France and Italy · The case of Aigues-Mortes · Settlement through the friends of peace in both countries It was decided at the Interparliamentary Conference which was held at Bern in the year 1892, that the next one should meet at Christiania; but this intention was frustrated by circumstances. The conflict between Sweden and Norway, which led, twelve years later, to the separation of the two countries, had even then taken such form as to make it clearly inadvisable to select the Norwegian capital as the seat of an international conference.