Publisher's Synopsis
As I advance in years I look upon life as a good deal of a paradox; at times it seems to be a mass of contradictions of love and hate, of friendship and enmity, of truths and falsehoods, of war and peace. In the same flash of time countries are throttling others; other nations are straining themselves not only to soften the hardships created by an international war, but to help feed, care for and dry the tears made by the havoc of slaughter. A most striking instance of this statement happened a few days before the outbreak of the war. Through a mutual friend, while in Bavaria, I learned that Miss Anna Eckstein, an American woman, who has devoted her life to the world's peace movement was visiting her home in Coburg Saxe-Weimar. It was a short distance from where I was staying, and I asked Miss Eckstein if she would come to me. The answer to my invitation was that much as she would love to see me we should have to defer our meeting to some other time. She was starting to make a tour of the Rhine cities, where she was going to give important talks on the work that was being done to encourage the world's peace. This would take most of her time until the early fall, when she was going to a peace congress in Vienna. She said that I might help her by forming two local centers in Chicago for the signing of many petitions pledging ourselves for the peace idea platform. I had not much more than read this letter and put the petitions away for safekeeping when the word came that the great war was declared.
