Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MEMOIRS OF BERTHA VON SUTTNER
THE RECORDS OF AN EVENTFUL LIFE
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
VOLUME I
PREFACE
TO MY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN READERS
It is a great gratification to me that the story of mylife—which I cannot suppose to be of general interestexcept in so far as it is linked with the story of a world-widemovement—is now put before the great communityof the English-speaking nations; for it is inthese very nations that the origin of that movement isto be sought, and by them its final victory is beingmost efficiently hastened. I have been brought to aclear recognition of this fact especially by the days Ihave spent in the United States and in England inrecent years. There I perceived with astonishmentand admiration how in these two countries (especiallyin America) the peace problem, still largely antagonizedor ignored on the continent of Europe, has notonly met with widespread comprehension but alsoreceived already a positive and practical working out.Little of this is told in the present book; yet in it Ihave set down the fact that the reading of Englishscholars and thinkers (Herbert Spencer, Henry ThomasBuckle, etc.) was what opened my mind to take inthe peace cause, and furthermore that a tract of theLondon Peace Association presided over by HodgsonviPratt, accidentally coming to my knowledge, gave theinitial occasion for all that I have endeavored to do asa helper in the peace movement.
In the year 1904 I came to America on the occasionof the Boston Congress. Of the sublime impressionsthat I there received I give a brief and fragmentaryaccount in the supplementary chapter appended tothis edition. In the year 1907 I attended the InterparliamentaryConference in London, and there hadopportunity to hear Campbell-Bannerman speak; hisproposals for the limitation of armaments, and for aLeague of Peace among states, bore renewed witnessto the pacifist disposition of British statesmen. A yearlater, while the Peace Congress was being held inLondon, it was my privilege to meet the King andQueen of England; and in words that I heard fromthe mouth of Edward VII, and in those which hecaused to be written to me by his private secretary,Lord Knollys, I have confirmation of the fact thatthe name by which he has passed into history, Edwardthe Peacemaker, is in ful