Agent of Peace (3 page)

Emily was often unwell. Her doctor from Italy, Dr Francesco Forlani, wrote to her, in flowery Italian on 11 August: ‘However good your health situation may be, every preoccupation or apprehension can be extremely dangerous for you. So, be strong and don’t listen to the noble voices from your spirit which will incite you.’
10

For the moment she took his, and Leonard’s, advice, but she wrote to her South African friend Jan Smuts, a prominent member of the government there, on 8 August: ‘It would be some satisfaction if we could put Grey in a battleship by himself and William II in another and let those two sink each other if they are so anxious to.’ She had little sympathy with Grey’s policies or the people with whom Britain was allied and she did hope South Africa would be able to stay out of the conflict.
11

But, the Dominion countries of Australia, New Zealand and Canada had followed Britain into war and the Union of South Africa which also had Dominion status felt obligated to follow suit. Prime Minister Louis Botha thought the Union’s role would be a passive one but he was at once called on to capture the ports in German South West Africa, now Namibia, a matter on which he said he would have to consult the Union parliament.

Rosika Schwimmer, active as ever, wrote to Emily on 18 August, saying she was leaving for the United States to see President Wilson and Mr Bryan, the Secretary of State, to put before them a concrete plan for mediation. She wanted a note from Emily expressing her belief in the necessity of urgent mediation. Emily wrote back on 21 August in the style she kept for such occasions saying that she honoured the spirit that prompted Rosika’s journey, though quite unaware of her plan, and said:

It would be a fine lesson for the World if America, like some great mediating Angel, put forth her arm, and stayed the Nations, ere greater carnage comes. Alas! I fear it is both too late and too early for such action on her part. Yet to America many of us look, trusting that She will exercise moral influence, and fulfil that lofty destiny amongst the Nations of the World which we once dreamt was England’s high calling. But again the use of physical force has triumphed and now America alone can intervene to uphold higher influences.
12

Soon Emily herself was spurred into action. She had long been interested in the Quakers, otherwise known as the Religious Society of Friends. The Friends had suffered from religious restrictions in the past, and although by now they had equal freedom, their approach to war was different. Many were pacifists. A Christian Pacifist conference had been convened in Konstance, Germany, on the eve of the war. After leaving the conference Dr Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, a German Lutheran pastor, and Henry Hodgkin, an English Quaker, took a pledge that, as they were one in Christ, they could never be at war with each other and that they would continue in a life of service. In England this led to the foundation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
13
Naturally Emily was interested in this group.

She wrote a flyer addressed to women throughout Europe – a church-going population would have recognised the quotation used to head the appeal:

To Women Throughout Europe

‘He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them and blessed them.’
*

Fellow Women,

The war is crushing helpless millions. These are mostly women and children. In Galicia, Serbia, Poland, Belgium, East Prussia, France and elsewhere the people are perishing.

Relief, however colossal, can but touch the fringe of the want.

If the war continues, die they must.

We ask: Must it continue? Can any good come by further bloodshed to weigh against such evil which could not be better attained by agreement and goodwill.

A hundred years ago men proclaimed they fought, as each country asserts it is fighting to-day, ‘to secure the rights, the freedom, and the independence of all nations’.

War failed to secure those objects then; can we reasonably suppose it will do so now? …

[She appealed to England to show the way and continued] Will you not plead on their [the children’s] behalf ere it be too late.
14

Meanwhile, in South Africa, trouble was brewing. Naturally the wounds and sorrows of the Anglo-Boer War had not healed and some people among the Afrikaner community, including the old and revered General de la Rey, felt this was the time to break with England. But on 15 September, on his way home after a special parliamentary session which had approved action, he was accidentally shot.
15

Unrest followed and on 26 October it was announced that rebellion had broken out. Three Boer generals were involved, the famous De Wet, whom Emily knew, Beyers and Kemp, and there were also other commanders. Their effort was generally thought to be not well coordinated.

On 28 October, Leonard was in touch with Emily:

You will feel with me that, whatever the origins and cause, the outbreak of civil war in S. African Union is an unspeakable calamity. You can influence a good number there who may be wavering and my suggestion is that you send a wire to Mrs Steyn [her friend, the wife of the ex-President of the Orange Free State]: ‘Trust South African women will prevent outbreak of civil war.’ At the same time the message would be given to the press.

If she agreed, he would have to contact Harcourt, the Colonial Secretary, about it. On 30 October Leonard wrote again: ‘On receipt of your evening telegram I sent a note to Harcourt by special messenger and received a reply from him at 11.39 p.m. saying “please send cable but don’t use my name.”’ The words Emily used were ‘I appeal to you to urge South African women to prevent civil war.’ Leonard told her she had done what she could ‘and if you only deter one doubting person from leaving his home and risking his neck in a mad enterprise it will be worth it.’ Emily received a cable back reading ‘Utmost being done Mrs Steyn’ and told Leonard he could use it as he wished.
16

Emily wrote to Isabella ‘Tibbie’ Steyn (they were lifelong friends but remained formal in writing):

C/o Barclay & Co.Ltd.,
**

137 Brompton Road,

London S.W.

Oct 29 /14

Dearest Mrs Steyn

My thoughts are with you and the President in these days of sorrow and tension. This World’s War is piercing into every life. I know the form it is taking in South Africa will pierce deeply into yours and with varying emotions.

Today I ventured to cable to you to urge South African Women to stop Civil War with one voice. I thought remembering the Past and its Pain, its Dead and the old oft repeated … ‘Never again War in South Africa between Whites’ the women might rise in a body headed by your influence and demand that the men on both sides lay down their arms.

The censorship is strict and this may never reach you.

I long for more news and for news I can rely on, but I have little time to write and if the President is ill neither probably have you.

I send this to state the mere fact of having cabled to you to send my love and sympathy to you all.

Yrs ever

Emily Hobhouse

P.S. Of course I could not go to Italy this year, so I am in Cornwall and we look after Belgium refugees. Their tales are the same in every particular I listened to 14 years ago – the war-look stamped on their suffering faces just as those Boer women looked – but their sufferings are less for they are received here with open arms and every kindness is shown to them – and there is no want and sickness amongst them such as we knew of old.
17

With her mind on South Africa Emily wrote to Jan Smuts:

I cannot bear to think that dear De Wet and Beyers and Kemp will meet a rebel’s death. You have asked too much of human nature … I write in a hurry to implore you if these men are captured … not to shoot them unless in open fight. The issue might be awful – an internecine struggle – an enmity never forgiven. They are brave, good men. Keep them in prison till the end but do not execute them, do not, do not, do not.
18

As Leonard was still for supporting the war. Emily wrote to him on 3 November 1914: ‘However I suppose you are now friends again with the Government, and having fallen on the neck of Lloyd George you could maybe get him to intervene about the S African rebels if there is any idea of the extreme penalty wh I fear.’
19

In time De Wet and Kemp were captured, while Beyers drowned trying to cross a swollen river. Only Jopie Fourie, a sharpshooter commander, was court-martialled and shot, an issue Smuts was not allowed to forget.
20

At Christmas Emily wrote a letter for
Jus Suffragii
addressed ‘to the Women of Germany and Austria’ under the heading ‘On Earth Peace, Goodwill towards Men’. It was signed by 100 women and, it would seem, one man – Gandhi. She said:

The Christmas message sounds as mockery to a world at war, but those of us who wished and still wish for peace may surely offer a solemn greeting to those of you who feel as we do. Do not let us forget that our very anguish unites us, that we are passing together through the same experiences of pain and grief. Caught in the grip of terrible Circumstance what can we do? Tossed on this turbulent sea of human conflict, we can but moor ourselves to those calm shores whereon stand, like rocks those eternal verities – Love, Peace, Brotherhood …

She prayed for peace:

We urge that peace be made with appeal to wisdom and reason. Since in the last resort it is these which must decide the issues, can they begin too soon? …

Peace on earth has gone, may Christmas hasten that day …
21

Eleanor Hobhouse – Emily’s cousin, Henry’s
*
daughter – stayed with her that Christmas. She was a Red Cross nurse and had been in Belgium shortly after war began and from her, Emily was able to learn firsthand about conditions as she saw them there. Refugees had been arriving in England from Belgium, fleeing from German rule. Emily, who was always thinking up ideas, had written to her brother in September suggesting he contact their cousin Sir Charles Hobhouse, Paymaster General, with the idea that some of the empty boarding houses and hotels in health resorts could be used to house them at a fixed sum per week.
22

Emily was also interested in the work being done for the relief of interned enemy aliens by Eleanor’s brother Stephen, a Quaker convert. As strong as Emily in his beliefs, he was soon to be in trouble as a conscientious objector.

The year ended with Emily still trying to convert Leonard to the pacifist cause and hoping he would bring the
Manchester Guardian
in as well. She was constant in her belief that Germany would give way on moral grounds. Leonard, however, was not moved.
23

*
      Mark, Ch 10 v16.

**
    Emily used her bank address for many letters as she was continually moving around and the bank was prepared to keep the letters for her.

*
      Rt Hon. Henry Hobhouse PC, (MP, JP), 1854–1937, was head of Emily’s branch of the Hobhouse clan. He was a Privy Councillor and MP for East Somerset 1885–1906. He was married to Margaret Potter whose intellectually gifted sisters included Kate Courtney and Beatrice Webb.

1
.    JHB collection

2
.    Jagow,
England und der Kriegsausbruch
p. 3

3
.    Oxford and Asquith,
Memories and Reflections
vol. 2 p. 6

4
.    JHB collection

5
.    Patterson,
The Search for Negotiated Peace
pp. 30–2

6
.    Ibid.

7
.    JHB collection

8
.    Ibid.

9
.    EH Journal, ‘The Story of my visit to Germany. June 7–June 24, 1916. During the Great War’ pp. 1–3

10
.  JHB collection

11
.  EH to J.C. Smuts, 8 August 1914

12
.  JHB collection

13
.  TNA (British National Archives, Kew) CAB 24/34
Pacifism

14
.  JHB collection

15
.  Meintjes,
General Louis Botha
pp. 215–26

16
.  JHB collection

17
.  Bloemfontein Archives, Isabella Steyn Collection

18
.  EH to J.C. Smuts, 29 October 14

19
.  JHB collection

20
.  Meintjes p. 249

21
.  
Jus Suffragii
, 1 January 1915, p. 228

22
.  JHB collection

23
.  Ibid.

A
fter Basil Thomson, the Scotland Yard Intelligence Chief, had investigated pacifist organisations in 1917, he felt that the Cabinet would be interested to know that the Fellowship of Reconciliation
*
had, among other things, suggested that: ‘Miss Emily Hobhouse should carry literature to Italy.’
1
By then, Emily had become well known to Scotland Yard and carrying literature was probably against regulations.

In any case, in March Emily decided to make her annual journey to her winter home in Rome. Whether she carried leaflets or not, she must have welcomed the opportunity to be active. She worked for pacifism in Italy, helped no doubt by influential friends.

Before leaving she wrote to her friend Jan Smuts:

8th March 1915
Asquith calls us ‘Sparrows twittering’; let him mock … Our work is intense; we rest not day or night. I hope in Switzerland and Italy to consolidate the women there … America has started a huge ‘Women’s Peace Party’ and with Jane Addams
*
as President is helping and will probably lead us …

We believe not in narrow nationalism, but in inter-nationalism, the brotherhood of man, and we recognise no enemies; all humanity are our friends and our interests everywhere are one and the same …

[Talking of moral rights, she said] England’s greatest opportunity came to her last August …
She let it go by
, and has for ever lost it. Those great moments come seldom, they can never be recalled … So I mourn …