INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 213 
kicked over a lantern in Chicago, and a fire loss of two hun- 
dred million dollars followed. Field cabled to London that a 
hundred thousand people were homeless and suffering, and 
that the banking houses with American connections should 
organize a relief fund. Many other cablegrams were sent, 
and a large sum of money was collected for relief. ‘The mayor 
of Chicago telegraphed: ‘“God bless the noble people of Lon- 
don. Your response was received by our committee in tears. 
We are lifted from our desolation.” 
A few weeks later Field attended a telegraphic convention 
in Rome. Prompted by a letter from Morse, he argued for 
protection and inviolability of submarine cables during wars; 
in fact, spent Christmas and New Year’s Day in this endeavor. 
The convention, which was international, lasted six weeks. 
Morse and Field were ahead of their time in the interna- 
tional sympathies that the telegraph had encouraged in them. 
‘They had seen the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, 
and had been shocked and revolted by them. While Field 
was in Italy, the people of New York were agog over the mur- 
der of the notorious financier, James Fisk, Jr., by a rival ina 
love affair. Fisk was called “the king of Wall Street” and had 
been associated with Jay Gould in various ventures. Wall 
Street scandals were becoming numerous in post-war New 
York. 
Field went to Russia before returning home. So frequent 
were his trips across the Atlantic that in 1878 his distin- 
guished guest in New York, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 
of Westminster, referred at the Century Club to “the won- 
derful cable, on which it is popularly believed in England 
that my friend and host Mr. Cyrus W. Field passes his myste- 
rious existence, appearing and reappearing at one and the 
same moment in London and New York.”’ Somewhat similar 
sentiments were expressed in November, 1872, by Premier 
Gladstone at a dinner given by Field in London shortly after 
the Alabama settlement. 
