↑copy May 15 (?)↓
Dear Mrs Lloyd,
Miss Addams has asked me to write to you in regard to the matter that you bring up in a letter to her of May April 21 and I will do the best that I can at once, hoping to send some more data later. -- While this letter was under way your letter of May [12] has been sent to me also, so I can answer both together.
First with regard to the Dearborn Independent pamphlet reprinted in Ky. As one reads it one gets the impression that it is an effort of Mrs. Lund's to create prejudice against Mrs. Mead though of course this may not be a good guess. In itself it would be entirely negligible if people were not so extraordinarily impressed by anything in print.
I send you herewith comments on it point by point. As I do so I am surprised to see how empty it is.
I saw the remarks of Representative McLeod and went up to his office and saw him by appointment and talked two hours with him and a you another young ex-soldier (like McLeod himself who is the youngest man in the house). This Mr. Pritchard is employed by Mr. McLeod to get together material for a bill for suppression of seditious acts that M. is introducing. It deals with efforts to [overthrow] the government by violence. And he seemed to think this somehow would deal with the W.I.L.P.F. with its efforts again against all violence. Isn't it a regular through the Looking-glass performance. I think I did make some impression in the end however.
As to our having being Russian tools etc. nothing could be madder. We have no Russian Section, no Russian membership, no Russian connections. There was one lady who lived a long while in this country who became an associate member while living in Switzerland later. I know of no single other Russian in our lists.
I think Mrs. Mead, 89 Euston St., Brookline, Mass., could get you a copy of the Decatur report and tell you all about that affair. I mean Mrs. Lund's amazing proposal that the N.C.W. should investigate its sister organizations. [page 2]In regard to your later letter with clippings regarding the Congress. Meetings were all open to the public on purchase of a fifty cent ticket required for at least some of the meetings.
Reporters were always present.
As far as I have seen clippings a large percent are [illegible] unfriendly. The story we head before we got to Washington was of a reporter told by his paper "to give them Hell" and the [explanation] offered was that it was an effort "to get oil off the front page." My own guess is that a narrow and timid patriotism and stimulated by previous misrepresentations entered into the opposition of the Daughters of 1812 who [were meeting] here just before us and who made our Congress an issue. The papers, the unfriendly ones prophesied dire things beforehand and afterward magnified a mild attempt at heckling of one insistent "Daughter" into a riotous scene. In Cinn. opposition developed to an after meeting there of delegates going through to the our Chicago Summer School on a so-called "Pax Special" train but it all smoothed out. As far as we have news the various stops of this party have been most successful, perhaps particularly so at Goucher [College and] Johns Hopkins University. At one city the Mayor became an honorary member of our League!
At the Congress we had Speeches by Senators Borah and Shipstead [and] Rev. Dr. John Ryan one of the most distinguished Catholics in the country. There was no wild or irresponsible talk and the voting went against our own more radical wing when there [was] any difference of opinion among us. I hope we can soon be sending you a copy of the Resolutions passed.
It shows to what length the unscrupulousness of the press goes that some of the papers report Borah as having rebuked us!
I hope this may meet some of your questions and I [shall] be glad to answer further if there other points on which I can throw any light.
Yours truly,
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