NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION
My Dear Miss [Addams] --
In carrying on the church suffrage work, I feel the need of more efforts to interest the Catholic clergy and would like to publish a leaflet of opinions of Catholic Bishops and Priests in favor of woman's suffrage. I remember you told me when we were in Des Moines last year that no Catholic Priests were helpful in securing municipal suffrage for women in Illinois.
Would it be possible for you to get something from them or other [prominent] Catholic clergy in your state favorable to woman suffrage for me to use in the proposed Leaflet? If you could it would greatly [page 2] help me and I would appreciate it.
I am to call on the Catholic Bishop here this week and hope to get some testimonials in these states where women have full franchise.
I presume you have seen that the Iowa legislature has passed a woman suffrage amendment and it will be voted on in that state in 1916. The church meetings we had in Des Moines it is said, carried a great many church people to come out in favor of suffrage and the clergymen are going to be of great help in this campaign and the ministerial association sent speakers to the legislature and helped to get the amendment through the Legislature.
We have been spending the winter in California for Mr. Craigie's health and he is very much improved so we expect to return to Buffalo by April 1st and I have promised to go to West Virginia to give my services in helping start their Campaign there in April and May and later on will go to New Jersey -- also a campaign state.
I have been interested in reading of the meetings in the interest of Peace you have been having in Chicago. I belong to the Buffalo Peace Society <and the Am. Peace Soc> and think efforts to procure not only a cessation of war at present but disarmament and an agreement among the nations to settle their difficulties through arbitration is the most important question before the world today. I wish you all success in any new plans or efforts that may be made toward that [page 3] end. I do not think, however, the movement should be confined to our country. It should be a great spontaneous world movement. I happened to be in Washington D.C. when there was a great public meeting at the Pan-American Building at which Pres. Taft and others spoke in support of the arbitration Treaties, then before Congress, which if they could have been carried out might have prevented this war.
The finest address made there was by a member of the Japanese Parliament who was sent to this country expressly to communicate Japan's views on the subject and he said that "Japan was ready if the other great nations agreed to settle all questions by arbitration, instead of war." Japan would also sign such Treaties.
This war is terrible; but perhaps it needed this culmination of the war spirit involving so [page 4] many nations in financial, commercial, and moral disaster to write the closing chapter in the "History of War" and to inaugurate the period of world "Peace."
Dear Miss Addams, I want to tell you how much we all love you and what an "Ideal and an Inspiration" you are to us -- of unselfish devotion to all those great movements for the uplift of humanity and the betterment of the world!
I trust you are not working too hard! It is a marvel to me how you find time to accomplish so much. I almost feel guilty to still further burden you by my request but perhaps you can find someone to do what I ask if you have not the time yourself.
Thanking you in advance for any help you may be able to give me
Please reply to my Buffalo address
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