But I will not anticipate the historic evolution of things. For the time being I will confine myself to the year 1899, the last year of the departing century. The conference was called; the date of its opening was set. Points 1 and 8 of the programme contained in essence everything that a complete revolution in accordance with the opinions of the peace champions could involve; and I remember that we—I mean my husband and myself and all our colleagues—faced the event, when it was announced, as one would face a momentous crisis full of promise, or rather already fulfilled. I was conscious of this historic phenomenon not merely as something that was taking place in the world without, but as my own inmost experience, as altogether a phase of my personal destiny. And I regarded it as “the one important thing.” The skeptics of that day shrugged their shoulders at this notion, and even the wise ones of to-day would largely smile at it. Certainly, they might say, universal peace has not resulted from the Hague Conference; on the contrary, horrible wars followed it, and since it was called and repeated, the rivalry in increasing armaments has gone on with accelerating strength. It is hard to make headway against such naïve arguments when they are based on succession of events rather than on their connection and their causes. There are minds on the chessboard of society which absolutely cannot see farther than from one square, from one move, to the next. Assuredly, for the great majority the whole matter was something so novel, so unprecedented, so unexpected, and it was so unapproachable by familiar paths of thought and feeling, that the widespread misconception of it was quite natural. For the rest of us, who for years had been concentrating our labor, our thought, and our desires on this field, for us who had traced its origins and seen the bright-shining goal clearly outlined before us, for us it was just as natural to realize that the new epoch—the warless day, _l’ère sans violence_, as Egidy used to call it—had already come when the first steps toward its practical inauguration were taken so publicly. In January, 1899, my husband and I went to Berlin to work there in behalf of the crusade, or at least to arrange for a meeting in behalf of the coming Conference. Our first call was on the Russian ambassador, Osten-Sacken. It was remarkable, but we found that he was no enthusiast for the affair inaugurated by his _auguste maître_; his wife also showed herself rather skeptical.