LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS.VIENNA.LONDON.A SUMMER IN SWEDENThe beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz.Their rooms, so often thronged with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the "Second Embassy." Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies.
Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most notable.Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners--his sayings and opinions were widely quoted.
A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T.Stead, of the Review of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment.
The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident an added interest.
To Wm.T.Stead, in London:
No.1.
VIENNA, Jan.9.
DEAR MR.STEAD,-The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.
Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.
MARK TWAIN.
To Wm.T.Stead, in London:
No.2.
DEAR MR.STEAD,--Peace by compulsion.That seems a better idea than the other.Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it.We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.Can't we reduce the armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength 10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at one time.It has been tried.We are not going to try to get all of them to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must withdraw my influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed together.They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be against nature and not operative.A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if three other powers will join.I feel sure that the armaments are now many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or war.Take wartime for instance.Suppose circumstances made it necessary for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did before--settle a large question and bring peace.I will guess that 400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).
In five hours they disabled 50,000 men.It took them that tedious, long time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.
But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower guns, raining 600 balls a minute.Four men to a gun--is that the number?
A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man.Thus a modern soldier is 149Waterloo soldiers in one.Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as effectively as we did eighty-five years ago.We should do the same beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then.The allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip him.
But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France, taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field.Each man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.
Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work, they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking and sit down and cipher a little.
Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed.Then we can have all the peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it.
VIENNA, January 9.
P.S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--"350 million" ought to be 450 million; "349,982,000" ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on the planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a half the existing males.
Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to him across the years.He always welcomed such letters -they came as from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness.He sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an undercurrent of affection.
To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6, Feb.26, 1899.
DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed.He was to teach me the river for a certain specified sum.I have forgotten what it was, but I paid it.I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A.T.
Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A.B.Chambers (one trip), and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect.Bixby is not 67: he is 97.I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for 57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than he really was.At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of his before the Revolution.He has piloted every important river in America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.