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In: Biographies·History - European·History - Modern (1750+)
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #66279.
Bertha von Suttner’s memoirs are a self‑conscious chronicle that intertwines the author’s personal history with the development of the international peace movement. The opening pages explain her intention to record a life that, while rooted in her aristocratic Austrian upbringing, gained relevance through its connection to a “world‑wide movement” that she witnessed flourishing in the United States and England. She attributes her pacifist awakening to English thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and to a London Peace Association pamphlet, then sketches her later involvement in key events, the 1904 Boston Congress, the 1907 Inter‑Parliamentary Conference in London, and a meeting with King Edward VII, while noting contemporary American legislative advances toward a League of Nations. The book proceeds in a chronological structure, moving from childhood and early youth through a series of detailed episodes that document her travels, artistic pursuits, and increasingly active role in peace societies.
The narrative voice is that of a reflective, educated woman of the late‑19th and early‑20th centuries, combining personal memoir with political commentary. Suttner’s prose is formal yet intimate, peppered with references to notable contemporaries and a steady stream of letters, speeches, and conference reports. Readers interested in women’s history, Austrian cultural life, or the origins of modern pacifism will find the work rewarding; it also appeals to scholars of trans‑Atlantic intellectual exchange and to anyone who enjoys a richly detailed, historically grounded autobiography.
The opening · free to read
It is a great gratification to me that the story of my life—which I cannot suppose to be of general interest except in so far as it is linked with the story of a world-wide movement—is now put before the great community of the English-speaking nations; for it is in these very nations that the origin of that movement is to be sought, and by them its final victory is being most efficiently hastened. I have been brought to a clear recognition of this fact especially by the days I have spent in the United States and in England in recent years. There I perceived with astonishment and admiration how in these two countries (especially in America) the peace problem, still largely antagonized or ignored on the continent of Europe, has not only met with widespread comprehension but also received already a positive and practical working out. Little of this is told in the present book; yet in it I have set down the fact that the reading of English scholars and thinkers (Herbert Spencer, Henry Thomas Buckle, etc.) was what opened my mind to take in the peace cause, and furthermore that a tract of the London Peace Association presided over by Hodgson Pratt, accidentally coming to my knowledge, gave the initial occasion for all that I have endeavored to do as a helper in the peace movement.
In the year 1904 I came to America on the occasion of the Boston Congress. Of the sublime impressions that I there received I give a brief and fragmentary account in the supplementary chapter appended to this edition. In the year 1907 I attended the Interparliamentary Conference in London, and there had opportunity to hear Campbell-Bannerman speak; his proposals for the limitation of armaments, and for a League of Peace among states, bore renewed witness to the pacifist disposition of British statesmen. A year later, while the Peace Congress was being held in London, it was my privilege to meet the King and Queen of England; and in words that I heard from the mouth of Edward VII, and in those which he caused to be written to me by his private secretary, Lord Knollys, I have confirmation of the fact that the name by which he has passed into history, Edward the Peacemaker, is in full measure his due.
At the last moment, just as I am writing these lines, the question of the peace of the world has led to the taking of remarkable steps in America. The most prominent men in the Union—Taft, Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Knox, etc.—are coming forward with positive proposals for the organization of the world, and the House of Representatives has accepted a most significant law. Of this one of the greatest American workers for peace writes me as follows in a letter dated from Skibo Castle, June 30, 1910:
... The greatest news received lately is the passing of a bill by the House and Senate of the United States, establishing a commission to take measures to bring about a League of Peace among nations. Mr. Roosevelt is to be chairman. This means business. America is now in earnest. We hope she will no longer be dragd into enormous armaments. The good work goes bravely on.
Yes, indeed: our brothers of the English-speaking race—especially those in the young New World—“mean business” when they undertake anything. And their enterprises are not (as an old prejudice assumes) limited to the commercial and financial domain, but embrace the region of the highest human thought, and rest upon the deepest ethical foundations.
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