191 33 Felix Moscheles 



From an account in the Manchester Guardian 

 written after Moscheles' death in 1920, I learn that 

 a visit to Paris in 1871 after the Commune 



bit deeply into this sensitive and generous mind the horrors of 

 warfare, and from that time onward Moscheles was one of the 

 most active spirits in the international peace movement. He 

 succeeded Hodgson Pratt as president of the International 

 Arbitration and Peace Association. Henry Richard, Hodgson 

 Pratt, and Spence Madsen were, like Cobden and Bright before 

 them, pure Enghshmen, strong with the strength of personal 

 integrity and ardour, but easily distinguishable from the Conti- 

 nental apostles of the peace idea by their coloring of political, 

 economic, and religious liberalism. The International Peace 

 Day Celebration was devised by Moscheles. 



For years his large studio in Chelsea, littered with his own and 

 his wife's canvases, family treasures, and the jetsam of travel, 

 was the scene of gatherings of this kind. Here foreign statesmen 

 flying across the world, missionaries of inconceivable creeds, 

 beetle-browed revolutionaries, great singers and pianists, poets, 

 inventors of new languages, all sorts of forceful men and beauti- 

 ful women, were to be met. 



One of the most interesting products of his brush is 

 a speaking portrait of his friend Mazzini, whose 

 struggles in the cause of freedom profoundly stirred 

 the emotions. His declining years were darkened by cioomy 

 the war — which seemed likely to submerge a whole ^^°^' '<? 

 life work! His intimate friend, Emily Hobhouse, to li^usiije 

 whom I shall again refer, wrote me as follows : 



Ordinarily death at eighty-five should not be sad, but with 

 him it was too long a life, for he had lived to see, as he believed, 

 the destruction of his life work, and not long enough to see what 

 must arise from the debris. Madame Moscheles will be very 

 lonely after such years of tender devotion. 



Charles Weiss, another friend, said: "His work 

 will live after him, and already most of his ideas are 

 accepted by every one." 



n465 3 



