Agent of Peace (6 page)

I write to you privately what I believe I am desired to tell you – a note to the Office with which of course I have no further connection, unless someday I shall learn that individuals may affiliate, (also I hope Societies) direct to the Central (Bureau).

From here I can write more freely, but you cannot reply because I leave for Rome via Milan in two days, and not only is the state of affairs in France and Italy very bad for us, but I personally am under surveillance. Particularly are they suspicious of anyone who passes thro’ Switzerland and indeed if I linger here I shall not be allowed to cross the Italian frontier. I underwent a very long exam at the French border yesterday morning, but as I had nothing to hide and nothing to fear I did not mind, but the serious thing is they were expecting me.

Paris is full of unpleasant people, of that kind that always come to the surface in time of war. Our poor friends there are going thro’ evil days, and ask me to put you
au courant
. The police have raided the Office in Rue Foudary and her private house (three men coming before 7 a.m.) also their printer’s house. The Correspondence with your Bureau was seized, though not all. Every paper in Paris had articles and paragraphs about them during the successive days … They are held up to the scorn and derision of the entire country in a blaze of most unenviable notoriety …

[There followed changes of address and a request that the greatest prudence ‘is taken on what is sent’, followed by remarks on French politics] …

I send you 50 francs – This is a gift for us from the Frenchman whose name is on the wall list with a ‘le’ before it. You must send no receipt, or write or post to him anything more. His name is
not
to appear in any list – put Anonymous (French) 50 frs. His wife came to me (he is in the South) it would be certain death for him …
6

As for Emily, her troubles had not ceased. The British minister in Berne, Evelyn Grant Duff, was evidently anxious to appear efficient – he had an extremely efficient wife who was organising a major food parcels scheme for prisoners of war in Germany and later became a Dame of the British Empire. He remembered that the Foreign Office had asked in August for Emily to be apprehended and sent back to England so he wired the Foreign Office for instructions.

Emily wrote to Aletta Jacobs on 8 December: ‘I was writing you a long letter but that must wait a day or two.’ She said she had been held up – ‘no reason given’ – and she wasn’t certain whether it was a personal or general order: ‘No hint was given me that I should be kept a prisoner in Switzerland – where it is high and cold … I have been advised to appeal direct to Sir Ed Grey …’
7

She had wired accordingly to Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Hobhouse and Lord Courtney asking them to put pressure on the Foreign Office to let her continue her journey.

To Arthur Ponsonby MP she wrote:

Please see Sir Edward Grey on my behalf. Ask him to instruct Legation Berne let me proceed to Rome. Passports self and maid in order, viséd London and Paris for Italy via Switzerland. Resting here two days, find myself stopped no reason assigned. Health weak must go on. Must wind up affairs in Rome cannot afford to keep flat there longer nor stay here.
8

Finally Cecil relented and by 22 December authorised Grant Duff to give Emily a visa provided she promised not to indulge in propaganda, especially peace propaganda.
9

Grant Duff tried to get Emily to take an oath, which she would not, but she had to sign a paper:

I the undersigned, Emily Hobhouse, hereby solemnly and sincerely declare that if I receive the British visa to proceed to Italy, I undertake not to indulge in propaganda of any sort, especially propaganda in favour of peace, and not to remain in Italy any longer time than is necessary to settle my personal affairs. In making this declaration I clearly understand that it is open to the Italian authorities to refuse me permission to enter Italy if they judge fit.

The declaration was duly signed and witnessed.
10

Four days later Emily wrote to Aletta:

One last letter to you as I leave Switzerland and descend into what will be like the silence of the grave.

My telegram reached London because a wire came from the Foreign Office reversing the orders of Grant Duff the British Minister at this Legation. He however, to save his dignity I fancy, said I was to take an oath that ‘I would do no peace propaganda of any sort or kind in Italy’. I refused to take an oath – and so was made to sign a declaration of the same words … The Italian Consul made not the slightest difficulty and so off I go, and I do not envy myself the experience, for I shall be under close surveillance … and very likely my flat will be raided before I get there … I have arranged to send news if possible to Gertrud Woker and if you wish to write to me that also would be the best way, putting on your envelope to her Via Deutschland … She promises to be my private censor … Please, please no word of Peace. I should not at all mind an English prison, but draw the line at an Italian ditto! …

[As compensation to being kept in Switzerland she said she had met many of the Swiss women interested in peace – but found that even the nicest wouldn’t work easily with each other unless they agreed on every point.] I think the younger section … are shaking themselves free of the older suffragist … There are others too, anxious to start a general popular agitation to shew that the people insist on some effort being made by this country for peace. I do hope that Mr. Ford is really coming, he and his party might do something to unite and give expression to these various parties….

The accounts I have of Italy are very sad. I hate going there.

She gave the names of the five for the Executive from France which she hoped she got right as she hadn’t been able to (was afraid to) write anything down.
11

It was Chrystal Macmillan who answered Emily, writing to thank her for all she had done in Amsterdam.
12
Chrystal said she was very sorry to hear in London the way some people had behaved and told her: ‘You will be glad to know that we have had letters from one of the women you wrote to in Uruguay and from one in Japan – very friendly both.’ She remarked that the women in Manitoba had got full suffrage and it was expected in Alberta soon.

Perhaps unbeknown to Emily – she does not mention it – British Prime Minister Asquith paid a visit to Rome at the end of March. During this visit he saw Pope Benedict XV. In his memoirs, Asquith said: ‘Our talk was naturally confined to the war and germane topics: the Pope carefully refraining from indicating any leaning of his own to either side, and I giving no encouragement to a feeler which he incidentally threw out that he might act as mediator.’
13
In fact Asquith took the cavalier stand, so admirable in the British if one is not concerned about loss of life.

Emily concluded her affairs and left Italy in April 1916.

She wrote to Aletta Jacobs on Easter Day, 23 April 1916, from Berne that she was saddened by the thought that just when their work was most needed, the Bureau seemed to be breaking down.
14

Aletta had wanted her to go back to Holland but Emily said that it was impossible for several reasons: the English committee were dead against her being there; it was known that Chrystal Macmillan could only work with ‘machinelike subordinates’; her own bad health necessitated her keeping very warm; and getting a permit was expensive and impossible. She told Aletta she felt inclined to join the Ford Commission if it could get the free passport facilities which it had asked for. It was her hope that the International Bureau and the Ford Commission would work together.

She also told Aletta of the work of Rosa Genoni in Milan, who she felt was very brave to have had an appeal printed privately and spread amongst the crowd on May Day, and of the Italian women of Zurich who were being organised to do the same. Emily said she had written the Zurich people a little greeting and suggested that they should revive the old custom of choosing ‘Peace’ for the Queen of May, and should carry the symbolic figure through the streets of the city.

Although in her Journal Emily tells us some of the things she was doing she omitted to mention that she, along with forty-three delegates representing socialist parties in eight countries, attended the Socialist Conference at the little alpine village of Kienthal, known as the Second Zimmerwald Conference
.
15
These radical Socialist Conferences were organised by Robert Grimm, a Swiss Deputy, with the idea of replacing the annual meetings of the Socialist Second International that had been cancelled because of the war and were meant to be in the cause of peace. Such representatives of European socialist parties as could get to Switzerland attended. No one could come from Britain but both Lenin and Trotsky were at the first conference and Lenin at the second. It was at these conferences that Lenin propounded his revolutionary theory and this caused a split. His caucus was referred to as the Zimmerwald Left; Grimm and the majority were referred to as the Zimmerwald Centre. Emily was there as an observer and boldly signed the register as such.

*
      Sir John Simon later held the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary. He was a renowned chess player.

1
.    Kaminski,
Emily Hobhouse – The Radicalization o
f
a Ministering Angel
(PhD thesis, University of Connecticut) p. 299, card EH to Aletta Jacobs, 26 October 1915. ‘Lucy and I quite enjoyed being undressed at Tilbury. It was a new experience and as I tell her she will one day relate the adventure to her grandchildren.’, Aletta Jacobs archives

2
.    Jane Addams papers, Swarthmore College

3
.    Ibid.

4
.    TNA FO 163590/82506 enc B, Kaminski 300

5
.    J.C. Smuts to EH, JHB collection

6
.    Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam

7
.    Ibid.

8
.    TNA FO 163590/82506 enc. C; Kaminski p. 303

9
.    TNA FO187392/83506 enc. A

10
.  TNA FO 372/894 no.127435; Kaminski p. 303

11
.  EH to Aletta Jacobs, Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam

12
.  Ibid., 12 February 1916

13
.  Oxford and Asquith, p. 143

14
.  Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam

15
.  Noble,
War on War;
list of attendance at conference, JHB collection

O
n returning from Kienthal, Emily addressed a propaganda rally organised by the Berne International Union for Permanent Peace. It was reported in the Swiss newspaper
Der Bund
that she had reviewed the Peace Resolutions of The Hague Women’s Congress.
1
When Evelyn Grant Duff, the British Minister, read this report under the title
Die Frauen und der Friede
[Women and Peace], he was furious. He told the Foreign Office Emily had breached her signed declaration (Emily understood this paper was only for Italy, and, for once, some at the Foreign Office agreed). Should he revoke her passport? he asked. He said that peace propaganda at the present time was ‘open disloyalty.’
2

Emily was now labelled in the Foreign Office, perhaps fairly for once, as a ‘peace crank’. ‘Perhaps,’ it argued, ‘by revoking her passport she would leave Switzerland and she might be frightened into silence …’ After twenty-four days, on 27 May 1916 British Foreign Secretary Grey authorised Grant Duff to withdraw Emily’s passport.
3

However, by this time Emily was working on a new project. She had seen an article in
The Times
(which was available in every country, even during the war) about Ruhleben, the British civilian internees camp outside Berlin, and she thought she would very much like to go to see it, and she would also like to go to Belgium to see conditions there for herself. With this in mind she approached the German Ambassador, Romberg. He was sympathetic and we know from the German records that he went to the very top – to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg – to ask for permission.
4

It took a long time to get a reply. Emily fretted away her time at Gunten, a mountain resort near Berne, writing letters to the German Embassy to keep the matter in mind. In the end she was permitted to go to Belgium but denied permission to go to the internment camp. However, Romberg advised her to apply again when in Brussels as he knew the man in charge would be sympathetic.
5

Grant Duff, meanwhile, was having difficulty locating Emily as the Swiss police were forbidden to give out the addresses of foreigners. On 5 June his staff at last managed to find her. He then sent Emily what he called a ‘casual’ message requesting her to call at the Legation on an unspecified morning. He told the Foreign Office that he made the message deliberately vague ‘so as not to arouse her suspicion’.
6

Emily was not deceived. She wrote in her
Journal
:
7

Thus in the summer of this year 1916 on finding myself again in Berne I called on von Romberg and with my vision ever in my mind’s depths that I must go to Germany. I suddenly, while sitting in his room, saw in his face my opened door. To a man so sympathetic and broadminded as Baron von Romberg it was easy to explain my feelings and points of view and bit-by-bit I carried him with me. Yet I shall never forget his start as of a new light penetrating his mind when I said to him ‘I have no Enemies.’ It was evident that he made up his mind that I should go – and promised his influence with Berlin.

It took time, and patience on my part was necessary awaiting the reply – he himself in a visit to Berlin pleaded my cause. My request was grounded on an immediate desire to learn the truth in the interests of humanity and peace – and on larger issues to accentuate the fact of the brotherhood of mankind – the highest internationalism – Christian love and amity – to accentuate this as unalterable in the darkest moment of the World’s history. I know that he ‘understood’ and that his personal sympathy and high-minded belief in my Mission prevailed and gained me the end I so desired. Particularly I asked to study the condition of non-combatants in Belgium, our Civilians in Ruhleben, and the food supply in Germany and its effects on Women and Children.