With great respect Your wholly devoted Albert Apponyi Our friend Dr. Clark, a Scotchman, who has never missed a Peace Congress and has always distinguished himself by his clever speeches characterized by a certain dry humor, had just been made the object of bitter attacks by the British press. He sent me the following explanation of the circumstances: Ardnahane Cove, Dunbartonshire, September 11, 1900 Dear Madam von Suttner: I have received your letter, for which I thank you very heartily. These are indeed evil days for the cause with which we are associated, though I cannot but think that the events of the last year must have led many to the contemplation of the awful waste of life and suffering caused by the present system of settling international disputes by force of arms, and will induce them to work for the day when arbitration shall take the place of war with its horrible human sacrifice. You mention the letters written to President Kruger and General Joubert by me on the 29th of September of last year, which have lately been published by Mr. Chamberlain and copied by the continental press. It is quite true that there has been a great deal of misrepresentation on that subject. For some months before the war began there had been a small party in this country who had been working to bring about a peaceable settlement. I had some correspondence with President Kruger and General Joubert, in which I had advised them to make such concessions to the British government that the calamity of war might be averted, since the prosperity of South Africa must depend on the good faith and friendly feeling between the two white races. The published letters, to which you refer, are the last portion of this correspondence, and were written less than a fortnight before the war began. In my letter to President Kruger I gave him the result of an interview which I had with Mr. Chamberlain, in which I endeavored to induce him to accede to the repeated request which the Transvaal government had made that matters at issue should be settled by arbitration, and to consent that a permanent arbitration tribunal should be formed to which all present and future disputes should at once be submitted. I told him that the Transvaal government were willing to submit the differences pending between the two governments to a court of arbitration, consisting of the four chief justices of South Africa, and to accept the Lord Chief Justice of England as umpire in the event of the two colonial and two republican chief justices not being able to agree,—a suggestion which, as you will have seen, the colonial secretary was not able to accept.