WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM
October 17, 1919
Dear Miss Addams,
Frau Hertzka sent us some time ago the telegram of which you will find a copy herewith. I have been endeavoring to complete and bring up to date her material, with the aid of the International Red Cross people here. I enclosed some of this. Their special agent has just been in and he says that it is now too late to hope for [repatriation] this season; that the only thing to do is to send funds and that America is the only hope. Funds can be sent in care of the International Red Cross, Geneva.
We are very busy and when I am not doing something else that seems immediately necessary I am trying to push on with the Zurich report in spite of unimaginable difficulties of C. M's minutes, Kittelmann's stenography and Swiss printers and to work on the News Sheet.
I am planning to go to London the first of November for the Economic Conference of the Fight the Famine Council. I shall be very glad of the opportunity to confer with our members there. I shall also meet our Paris [page 2] friends en route returning. Incidentally I hope to meet Helen Cheever who happens to be arriving -- if all goes as planned -- just at that time. All this will mean that the next News Sheet will be coming out -- once more, if all goes well -- the last of November.
Recent side shows have been
↑(1)↓ [an] enquête on the milk situation in the stricken countries undertaken through our members, for the London Conference
↑(2)↓ Budapest appeal of suffrage committee
↑(3)↓ Siberian prisoners
Since Madam Ramondt and her daughter and Fr. Heymann left, the end of Aug., we have ↑had↓ less volunteer help. A charming Russian girl Eléna Wiskovatoff has been helping at a franc an hour very effectively, but I have let Professor Herron have first lien now on her time both for her advancement and to oblige him as he has done me endless favors. Then there is a miserable stranded Russian artist that I am letting work off part of some money I gave her by addressing News Sheets bands and now I have got a charming Austrian girl, all of whose fortune has been sequestered in France, doing copying for us at the current sweated rates. I hope I have the We are looking any [illegible] Then Miss Burritt, who has been more or less stuck here, has been putting our perfectly hopeless mass of clippings, which we had not been able to touch before, into order. [illegible] Meanwhile I find Miss Moore (the Australian) [who] is an expert stenographer would come and help us for some months, during which time she cannot get passage home, for her expenses. I expect her any day now and shall then feel immensely relieved as I hope she can work on the ↑Zurich↓ report but I notice Fraulein Wosner ↑Wössner↓ is counting on her relieving her so that she can finish the accounts for the four months June-october September inclusive. We also expect Miss Macnaghten any time now (she has been delayed by a bad foot) and I hope she will be our librarian. As it is now we cannot get much good out our really [page 3] very interesting material. She comes as a volunteer.
We have been highly uncomfortable these last days with that early cold that one feels more than more cold later and no heat, but now we have heat and at the same time the weather is better so we are [thawing]. There is snow on the near hills -- the Salève and the Jura, very lovely to see.
Your cable about accounts came through all right and I hope [there] will not be much more delay. I ahv e ↑I have↓ been desperate over ↑the↓ delay but it has seemed physically impossible to hurry the matter. It has been like those dreams where you try to [run] through something like thick molasses.
We see a good many people in the course of ↑a↓ week but there is neither any Genevan, or even any French-speaking, group of our Swiss section nor any local organized group ↑of our own bureau↓. My idea is later to form an international auxiliary Geneva [Committee] for lectures and what not. The Swiss section is open only to Swiss citizens and [illegible] so many of our friends here are foreigners!
Excuse my typing -- I have been sacrificing care to what for me is speed.
Always devotedly yours,
Emily Balch [signed]
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