May 10, 1917.
Dear Miss Addams:
Dr. Duggan of the program committee of the National Conference on Foreign Relations, called by the Academy of Political Science, has written you, asking you to take part. May I urge you to do so, if your strength admits of the trip and if you are coming East about that time for the settlement conference at Pittsburgh?
This may turn out to be a real opportunity to get progressive and social thinking on foreign relations before some people who will count. Invitations have been issued (covering expenses) to one hundred newspaper editors throughout the country, asking them to attend. The lists were made up by the Associated Press and the United Press. Your old friend John P. Gavit has been very active in scheming out that end of the plan.
And the whole conference grew out of representations which a committee of the American Union Against Militarism -- Mr. Villard, Miss Balch and I -- made to the Carnegie Peace Foundation, which appropriated $25,000 to the Academy to carry it out. They wanted some organization which was not tarred with the peace stick; and there is a veritable aura of dignitaries like Mr. Choate, Mr. Root and Mr. Hughes, who are not only lending their names, but are actively interested.
On the other hand, with Mr. Shaw, Henry Mussey, Judge Ransom, Prof. [Shepherd], Prof. Seager and Dr. Lindsay on the program committee, we are seeing [page 2] to it that the newer, more liberal forces in international relations have a hearing.
The whole thing grew out of the impression I carried away from the conference of intercollegiate polity clubs at Western Reserve University last June -- the impression that college students were getting what newspaper editors ought to have if American public opinion is going to count.
Chester Rowell is to be here, and, we hope, William Allen White.
Sincerely,
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