WOMAN AND WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 97, 14 August 1914, Page 4

WOMAN AND WAR.

It was in the year 1890 that Baroness Bertha von Suttner commenced writing her novel with a purpose, “Die Waffen Nieder” (“Lay Down Your Arms”). “It was a marvellous success,” says a writer in the London “Daily Telegraph,” “yet her publishers at first refused to print it. Everybody was reading this woman’s view of war; all the (newspapers were reviewing it; and in military Germany a popular edition of a quarter of a million copies was soon disposed of; and last year there had been fifty editions of the work, which was still in demand. And now it has been translated into every European language, and some others. The Baroness made three illustrious converts—first herself, next M. Nobel, the millionaire inventor of dynamite and blasting gelatine, and thirdly the Czar. M. Nobel was at first sceptical, but in the end he came round to her view, and devoted one of his five great annual prizes—worth about £BOOO each—to the cause of peace. He had, it is said, the Baroness in view, and in 1905 she was awarded the Nobel peace prize.” In a few months’ time Europe at least- will know something of what blessings there are not when the Peace angel takes wings and red, ruthless war steps in.