that, thanks to Sir Austin Chamberlain in 1927, refused to diminish the number of her cruisers and so spurred the American government to increase the United States Navy, as if in immediate fear of war.
June 1913, President Poincare paid a visit to England and was toasted everywhere as “a friend and ally.” Of course, it was a formal visit to King George, yet Poincare was the chief figure at the great review of English battleships at Portmouth.
Meanwhile peace conferences followed each other as if in derision. At the end of August 1913, a great Palace of Peace, due to the liberality of Andrew Carnegie, was opened at The Hague. It was the first universally recognized Temple of Peace and was praised in the press as a mark of “visible history.” First the Hague Peace Conference of 1899, and now this “pledge of peace universal and eternal” as the magazines called it. Mr. Van Swinderen, the head of the permanent Board of Arbitration, in his speech accepting the custody of the magnificent building, said: “No international controversies are so serious that they cannot be settled peaceably if both parties desire it.” It was asserted openly by the representatives of labor that the previous Peace Conference had been a failure because no one cared to propose that merchant ships should be immune in all wars.
The second Hague Conference held in 1907 had proposed that the third should be held in 1915 and that each nation should prepare a committee and charge it to make the proposals considered necessary. But in 1913 neither Russia nor England appointed such a committee. Clearly a pledge of universal and eternal peace needed better ratification than a splendid Temple. But Stead, the founder of the Review of Reviews and The War on War, the great apostle of peace, had unfortunately gone down with the Titanic in 1912. There was no one in England to take his place or work for peace as he had worked. One result was that in 1913-14, when the British expenditure on the Army and Navy had risen to?75,000,000, the expenditure on the Peace Conference was nil.
When I first began to hear things that led me to believe a world war was possible, I did not believe them. Grey, I said to myself, is too sensible and France has too much to fear; but Germany was always there with her brainless, provoking Kaiser. Still, I made up my mind that there was nothing serious to fear. Then, in the spring of 1914, I was imprisoned by Judge Horridge for contempt. Never was there a more unjust verdict. In the journal I had founded, Modern Society, an article had appeared commenting on Lord Fitzwilliam's divorce case; but I was not the editor. I had gone to the South of England to write my book on Oscar Wilde and never even saw the article before it was published. For the first time the managing director of a company was held responsible as if he had been the editor of the company magazine. The judge's clerk told me I would be forgiven if I apologized, but I had nothing to apologize for and therefore refused.
I was not a criminal and was only imprisoned by order of the judge and could be let out at any moment. I was therefore treated better than the perpetrators of even the pettiest crimes, but I can never describe how dreadful to me the prison was. Fixed hours for everything; at 7 o'clock the light went out and you had to pass the hours till 7 next morning in complete darkness. To get hot water to shave was only possible if you paid the keepers. Thanks to my wife who brought me money, I paid them lavishly, so lavishly that one day the cook came up to know what I would like to eat for lunch. But he could not make bad meat into good meat, or bad mutton into palatable mutton. When I stopped eating altogether because of the dreadful attacks of indigestion, the doctor came in and found me fainting. He told me that if I would not eat, I would be forcibly fed. I asked him to let me have hot water to wash my stomach out. He told me he had nothing to do with that. I suffered like a beaten dog every day. Prison in England is for healthy people. For those with indigestion, it is a perfect hell.
The man in the next cell kept crying and groaning half the night. But at the end of the week, I was told once again that if I apologized I would be freed. Again I refused to apologize. Still, my friends did a good deal for me. Lord Grimthorpe and others went to the Home Secretary and declared that my punishment was disgraceful and must be stopped. At the end of the month, Mr. Justice Horridge sent his own doctor to see if I was indeed ill.
The doctor reported that he would not answer for my life if I were imprisoned for another week and so I was set free.
An amusing incident highlighted my deliverance. I had tipped all the keepers and attendants so well that when I went out at 10 o'clock in the morning to leave the prison, they all took different parcels of mine to carry for me, half a dozen of them. Suddenly the governor of the prison arrived screaming with rage.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted at one keeper.
“Oh,” said the man addressed, “I brought his hatbox.”
“And you, what are you doing?”
“I brought his coat.”
The governor was furious and said that one more prisoner such as I was would turn the prison upside down. My wife and I stood there laughing.
The prison and my rage at being unjustly punished had broken my health. Horridge and his novel idea of punishing a managing director as if he had been the editor, nearly killed me. I was 58 years of age; the prison fare had ruined my digestion. I came out very ill indeed and this only increased my dislike of England and most English attributes. I came down to the South of France and there in brilliant sunshine soon began to get better. By the summer I was well again. But war was in the air and I resolved not to return to England. Instead, I would go to New York and begin a new life there. With only a few dollars in my pocket I set off. My wife decided to return to London and await results.
In my first days in New York I did a good deal of thinking. I was at the St. Regis Hotel where I had stayed during a prior visit to New York some years before. I had become friends with Mr. Hahn, the proprietor, and he was now very nice to me. I asked him to my room one day and put the case before him: Would he let me stay at the hotel for three months, and then I would be able to pay him everything. If he could not give me credit, I would have to leave. He told me very nicely that he could not give me three months' credit. I left the next day and went into lodgings on Riverside Drive.
There I sat down and wrote a short article on railroads, describing the main American railway organizations, including the Union Pacific.
I sent this little note to the heads of three American railways and asked them if they wanted an advertisement agent who could do new ads for them and whether they would employ me. I told them I wanted a large sum per month, and I gave the little paragraph I'd written as a specimen of my work. I was hired by two of them at oncethe Union Pacific and the Chesapeake and Ohio. I went to White Sulphur in Virginia to study the road, assured of a good reception in the hotel. I must also add that Otto Kahn was kind enough to write both to the Union Pacific and the Chesapeake and Ohio, recommending me.
Some time later I got to know Arthur Little, who was the printer and practically owner of Pearson's Magazine. He was not only kindly, but wise, and soon took me on as editor. Of course, I gave up my position on the railways and went back to my old work.
At first, I was very successful with Pearson's. The circulation rose rapidly and for nearly a year it looked as if I could make a great magazine out of it. But later came bad times. The Germans had invaded France and were beating the French and the English together. They had also practically crushed Russia. The idea was in the air that America should go to the help of the Allies and prevent Germany winning an undeserved victory. I was against the war passionately. I wanted America to force a peace, a “peace without victory,” as Wilson had said, which she could have done quite easily. But Wilson was not the man for the job, and so the war dragged on, sacrificing more than a million lives every month. To me it was all horrible and I protested against it in Pearson's again and again. That soon earned me the dislike of the authorities at Washington, and A. S. Burleson, the Secretary of State, held up Pearson's Magazine again and again in the mail for weeks at a time. When I went to Washington and asked him why he did it, he told me that it was on information he had received that it was seditious and against the interest of America. I pointed out that he had been mistaken six times running but got no satisfaction from the fool. Finally he held up the magazine for 27 days and that practically ruined the circulation. A.S.S. Burleson, as I called him to his face, was too strong for me. Instead of making $25,000 a year, I began to lose money. Soon the position became intolerable to me.
In 1918 the war ended, as I had predicted it would. I began to lecture in my bureau on 5th Avenue in New York, and made some money. But I had to give up my hopes of a great and significant journalistic success, thanks to the enmity of the government in Washington. One little incident will show how far Wilson's spite went.
In 1919 I was asked to produce my naturalization papers. When I told the official that I could not, he said: “It must be done if you wish to be treated like an American citizen, otherwise you might be turned out of the
