February 17 Thursday – In Vienna, Austria, Sam wrote to Chatto & Windus, enclosing J. Brander Dunbar’s letter of Feb. 13 (see entry). Sam wrote Dunbar that he copied the quotation in question from a “small book of travels & adventures,” but that he didn’t recall the title or the author. He asked Chatto to write Dunbar and refer him to the chapter and page of Roualeyn Gordon Cumming’s book (unspecified). Sam also asked them to continue his subscription to the Chronicle. Also, he agreed they were “quite right to object to my Zola book,” as he’d failed to “convey the idea I had in my mind” [MTP].

Sam also wrote to Baroness Bertha von Suttner (full handle: Bertha Felicie Sophie von Suttner 1843-1914), head of a Vienna pacifist group, The Austrian Friends of Peace. Since Sam’s was a reply to an invitation, and since he spoke to her group on Feb. 22, it seems clear that Suttner had sent him an invitation (not extant) to attend. Sam had been outspoken in his defense of Dreyfus and Zola, so it was natural that such groups would wish to include his voice. He replied it would be difficult for him to take the day off from his work but he meant to go at least to meet her. But he wasn’t enthusiastic about the practical influence of such groups.

I am indeed in sympathy with the movement [pacifist], but my head is not with my heart in the matter. I cannot see how the movement can strongly appeal to the selfishness of governments…./ If you could persuade the Powers to agree to settle their disputes by arbitration you would uncover their nakedness. You would never persuade them to reduce their vast armaments; & so, even the ignorant & the simple would then discover that the armaments were not created chiefly for the protection of the nations but for their enslavement [MTP]. Note: ironically the pacifist activist and editor of a peace journal, Baroness von Suttner, born Countess Kinskey in Prague, Czech. was daughter of a field marshall who died before her arrival, and the granddaughter on her mother’s side of a cavalry captain.

O.A. Wright sent a form letter from Detroit, Mich., which asked such inane questions as “What is the secret of success?” [MTP].