An International Conference was held in Brussels in 1899, for the purpose of considering and promoting international action for the preventive treatment of venereal diseases. As the programme of the Conference was expressly limited to the administrative and medical aspects of the question, and took no account of matters of moral and social order, the Abolitionist Federation declined to take any part officially in the proceedings, although individual members of the Federation accepted invitations to attend. The results of the Conference were a surprise to everyone, being in the nature of a triumph for Abolitionist principles. The prophets, who had been called together to bless the Regulation system, found themselves almost with one accord led by the spirit of truth to curse it. This Conference, and the Conference of the Federation which took place the same year at Geneva, were dealt with in The Storm-Bell in three articles, which are here given with some omissions.

It was very impressive to me and others to hear at our Geneva Conference an account of the Brussels Conference from Dr. Fiaux of Paris, who had attended it, and who with others had nobly fought the battle of the Abolitionists. His report was of such a nature as to fill our hearts with thanksgiving, wonder and praise. The Conference of Brussels, as my readers know, was convened with the confessed purpose of proposing an appeal to the European Governments to establish a uniform system of Regulation—of in fact patching up, if possible perfecting and making universal the unlawful and degrading system which we oppose. The conveners of the Conference were however, it seems, sincere and open-minded men; and the numerous medical and other disputants, who came delegated from different countries of Europe, and who were attached to the evil system, regarding only the material and medical side of the great question, appear to have been shaken in their views, and to have been compelled, even by the confessions of some leading Regulationists, to see that their theories are untenable, and that the system they have so many years upheld is as it were hanging in rags, a miserable failure, an old worn out and infected garment, into which it is worse than useless to introduce patches of new cloth.

Almost all the delegates, of whom the immense majority were Regulationists, acknowledged during the Conference that they had come there to learn, implying that they had need of knowledge. There seemed to prevail an open-mindedness, which had not been anticipated. Some of the English medical delegates, full of the old prejudices in favour of the system of combined slavery and license, must have gone home knowing more than they did before. Finally two resolutions were passed. One of the resolutions was in favour of an appeal to all the Governments to take measures for the better protection of minor girls, in order to prevent their being drafted into the service of organised vice; and another was to the effect that it is desirable that doctors should be better educated in the matter of the maladies in question. These harmless resolutions were voted unanimously.

An observant delegate wrote: “We all have the impression that the Regulationists now fully recognise us (of the Federation) as a force which they must in future reckon with.” A clearer idea of the influence, which was at work in winning for us this victory, was granted to me while listening to Dr. Fiaux’s report at Geneva. He spoke of an influence which hovered over the Conference from the first day to the last; an influence which restrained, which prevented rash or erroneous propositions, an influence which he believed to proceed from the gradually increasing tide of awakened and changed public opinion, and to which he attributed a kind of spiritual force, a restraining and guiding force. He asserted that it was felt by all, that it tended to check all violence of opposition, and disposed the minds of the delegates to accept a position of enquiry, and to begin again afresh the study of the question, rather than to hold to the conservation of the system, in which they could not any longer place absolute confidence. More than once Dr. Fiaux endeavoured to describe this influence, raising his hands above his head to illustrate something which hovered over the assembly, resting above it and making itself felt. Those of us, who have asked that an influence above and beyond all, that we ourselves by our utmost effort can exercise, might come to our aid when the opposing principles should thus meet in conflict, will understand what all this means, and will give thanks.

We have often watched the light thistledown, the winged seed, mount in the air and disappear, carried by the breeze who knows where? We only know it will settle somewhere, drop, die, live again, and spring up to bear in its turn “fruit after its kind.” The career of that special seed is denounced by cultivators as mischievous. But there are good seeds also with wings, which silently travel about the world, plant themselves and bear fruit for which all men bless them. It is of the latter kind that I want to say a word.

I do not think that as yet any adequate appreciation of the character of our last September Conference in Geneva, and its results, has appeared in our English Abolitionist Press. I should like, if possible, in some degree to supply that omission. That Conference has been spoken of in several English reports as “a Conference of members of the Federation.” It was not exactly so. It would be quite correct to say it was a Conference organised by the Federation (and splendidly organised it was by the brave little group of members of the Federation in Geneva). But we have never yet had such a crowded Conference organised by us, at which were present so few members of the Federation. We were a mere handful from England. Several of our allies whom we generally see from other countries did not appear, while many of our prominent members on the Continent and in England were prevented from coming by illness or other circumstances. Yet we had crowded sessions every day and all day. The striking feature of that Conference was the influx to it of new adherents to our principles, many of whom we had never seen, or never even heard of. Adherents to our principles they were, but not members of the Federation; nor did they, with very few exceptions, become there and then members of the Federation. And herein lies the encouragement of which I wish to speak. It is in connection with this fact that I wish my English friends to take courage and thank God with me. They flocked to us—these new adherents to our principles from France, from Belgium, from Germany, from Italy, etc. There were among them persons of many different creeds and opinions, and an extraordinary number of leaders of the Press from different countries, more especially of that enlightened Press minority in France who fought so hard and so noble a battle (in the Dreyfus case) in favour of justice. There were with us also many distinguished ladies—distinguished morally and intellectually—who for the first time greeted us as allies. Those who were at the public evening meeting in the Great Hall of the Reformation must have been struck by the immense variety of nationality, character, creed, and opinion of those who took part in it; and at the same time by the perfect unity, heart, and downrightness of that vast assembly in regard to the great question of Justice for which the Federation labours. Many were asking, “How has this come about? What energising and purifying wind has been blowing through Europe to bear towards us this new unexpected ‘cloud of witnesses’ to testify that truth gains ground in its own mysterious way?”

It seems to me that we—the Federation—are like persons who, wishing to propagate some beautiful flower, should have carefully laid out a garden, hedged it round, dug it well, and then sown in it abundantly the seed which was to produce the beautiful flower. We took great pains with our garden. We sowed our seeds in rows, neatly and measuredly, perhaps a little formally. We arranged with our under-gardeners, training them, and turning them off if they did not suit. Perhaps we pottered a little sometimes, but always with the one desire at heart of seeing some day a great harvest of this beautiful flower—a flower of such pure colour, and wholesome hygienic qualities. Sometimes we sighed, in times of drought or of failure of “hands” for the work. But lo! a day came when the assembled gardeners, coming together to reckon up the results of their work, happened to look over the hedge, and with astonishment noted that the country all round, fields and hillsides, on which they had not bestowed any personal labour, were ablaze with the azure of the beautiful flower which they had cultivated so carefully in their garden. They had forgotten that seeds have wings, and that they could silently distance the garden fence and fly afar. So with the principles which we have cultivated.

There were at Geneva young men, pastors from the French provinces, whose prayers at our morning devotional meetings were an echo of the depths of my own heart; and there were young women, some very young, looking in whose faces I asked myself, “How and where have these young people learned that zeal for justice, that pity for oppressed womanhood, and that grave view of life which we of the Federation could however never, and less now than ever, imagine to be the monopoly of experienced workers?”

The Conference of Brussels pre-eminently brought to us the lesson of the “Winged Seed.” The speech of Dr. Fiaux, of Paris, who came from that Conference to Geneva to tell us its results, was to me full of teaching of which possibly the speaker himself was not wholly conscious. It told of the power and silent progress of a truth carried abroad by the Spirit which “bloweth where it listeth.” The lesson of the “Winged Seed” goes far beyond our own special crusade. We may apply it in the darkest times. For Truth (like Love) cannot die. Therefore we will take heart and labour on, though the End is not yet.

A very friendly critic, in giving a report of the Geneva Conference in September last, asked the question, “Where was Mrs. Butler?” when some sentiment or proposition was announced which seemed not quite in harmony with the principles of the Federation. He added, “But doubtless her silence was to be attributed to her desire to hold the Federation together. She is naturally concerned about the Organisation.” I wish to answer the question, and to rectify the mistaken impression. I was absent from the discussion in question. I am not able to listen to discussions from morning to night, owing to diminished strength of body, and I must leave matters in the hands of younger and abler combatants. But on the other matter, my supposed attachment to our organisation, I want to say a word. I have no faith whatever in organisations except so far as they are a useful means for making known a truth or dispensing help to those who need it, and when they are completely subordinated to those ends. They are apt to become a snare to those who invent them and work them, unless great care is taken to revive continually within them the life by which alone they can usefully exist.

The history of the Jesuits and that of some other great organised societies are monuments of the idolatrous tendency in human beings, of their habit of degenerating to the worship of some gigantic and intricate earthly creation from that of the Unseen, the Living God. Such organisations may become in time the instruments of a propagandism the very opposite of that proposed by their founders; and they may end by following in the stately march of a cruel and murderous Juggernaut, crushing the life out of men and women, and all bespattered with the “blood of the poor innocents.” Short of such a ghastly development as this, vast organisations (the leaders of which may come to be themselves misled by pride or vanity, or the praise of man, to imagine that the life is still in their wheels when it is fast passing out from them) become effete, lifeless and unfruitful. The more they are in evidence before the world, the more showy they become, the more do they lose real power. Their hold on God is insensibly loosened, their members forget the command to “call no man master.” There creeps in upon them frequently a tyrannising spirit. Their leaders become a prey to the great delusion of the Russian ecclesiastical tyrant, that uniformity is a beautiful thing, and that it represents power. Uniformity is not a beautiful thing. There is no uniformity in God’s creation, either in the natural or the spiritual world. The insistence on uniformity crushes out individuality and hinders initiative. It clips the wings of the best human gifts and capacities. It introduces the opposite of that “glorious liberty of the children of God,” which sets each soul free to develop into that good thing which He created it to become. “You shall all speak alike, all work in the same way, all adopt the same manner, and obey implicitly the same rule.” This command is itself paralysing to freedom and to individual development and power. But when it comes to, “You shall all think alike, all believe the same things, all receive what your leaders teach, and act in accordance with a uniform creed,” then there comes down a spiritual blight, which ultimately leaves a body without a soul. It is best then that such an organisation should break up and disappear. If its existence is prolonged it may become the tenement of a spiritual influence which is directly evil, while still wearing the outward garb of what was originally good.

But our humble Abolitionist Federation! Is it likely to incur such a fate? No, I do not believe it ever will, for up to now it has continued humble; moreover it has never been strongly centralised, and never in any sense has it been tyrannised over by those who may be called its leaders. It is a union of free workers, who are at liberty to work along their own lines and in their own methods, in each country and each group. I hope it will not surprise any of my readers if I say that I should not grieve or be greatly disturbed if our Federation were to break up and fall to pieces to-morrow. Observe that I do not here speak of the people who form it, of the friends and fellow-workers of years past, as well as of welcome new-comers whom I trust and love. These are the life of the work. They are the living beings in whose souls reside the deep conviction, the strength of principle, and the unselfish purpose which have carried on our propagandist work till now, and which will continue to carry it on, with or without any special organisation. These persons will always have a warm place in my heart, for they have been and are my revered “yoke-fellows” in a just and holy cause; and when their own life-work is over they will bequeath to those who come after them the spirit which alone has made our labours fruitful. All my care is for the principle which we have been called to proclaim, not for the machinery through which the drudgery of the work has been facilitated. God does not need our poor machinery. He can create other methods of spreading a truth, if those now existing had better come to an end.

There is a deep meaning in that mysterious vision of Ezekiel, of the living creatures and the wheels. They were together lifted up from the earth, and guided through space wherever God willed; the wheels, wheel within wheel, an intricate mechanism, moved upwards and onwards, with the ease and power of a soaring eagle, because the Spirit was in the wheels, the Spirit which was as lamps of fire and as lightning. I have sometimes thought if the Spirit had left those creatures and that mass of wheels, with what a crash they would have come down to the ground! So long as we have that Spirit, even our wheels will have life, and our humble organisation will continue, as it has done till now, to glide past all dangers, and to win true hearts to our cause.