March 31, 1915.
My dear Miss Addams:
I acknowledge the receipt of your letter of March 24th, and I thank you for undertaking to make the [program] for one session of the proposed Conference. I hope there is no chance that you will not be here yourself in San Francisco on July 4, 5, 6, & 7th. You will be much needed here, and especially if you make the [program] for one session, I shall hope that you <will> preside over that session or at least after I have presided over the opening and introduced you to the audience making a statement in regard to the character of the session, I shall hope you will undertake its conduct. I am sure this will add greatly to the interest of the Conference.
I am glad, indeed, that you are going to The Hague. Our strongest and best representatives ought to be there. Perhaps in this connection it is hardly modest for me to say how much I regret that I am prevented from going by my conviction that it is my duty to stay here and carry this Conference to a successful development.
As I have many times written to you in recent months the danger points in the United States are on the Pacific Coast. The Exposition furnishes an unprecedented opportunity for us to meet with fine representative women from Japan, China, and other Oriental countries and also to a lesser degree are we having a chance to meet the women of South and Central America. These opportunities, so rare, it seems to me should be used by all of our leading women.
If the completion of the canal means anything, it means increased relationship with all the world in general, and particularly with those sections of the world that I have emphasized in the preceding paragraph. We must get the mind of the Pacific Coast adjusted to friendly relations with the Orient and the people of Spanish origin. One who has not been here and who has not associated [page 2] with the people with direct reference to ascertaining their feelings upon this subject can hardly know how sensitive the Pacific Coast mind is upon these two points, and yet every day I see reason to rejoice that we are preparing for the Conference for every day I see this prejudice in one or another person subsiding and giving way to a friendly attitude.
My dear Miss Addams, I wish you to bear for me to The Hague a message of most earnest congratulations, of warmest affection, of profound respect, and high admiration. The women of that country deserve the support of the women of the whole world.
You of course know that Switzerland has also moved to make a world union of women. Now we must have the women of all these countries represented in the Conference at San Francisco. I depend upon you to talk of this Conference at The Hague, and to use your influence to increase interest in it and to bring supporters to it; speakers and those who will take part in the discussions of our [program].
↑Since dictating the foregoing letter circumstances have arisen here which make it more possible for me to be absent for a few weeks and letters have been rec'd. from the Dutch women urging my attendance. These two facts explain the Night letter sent to you since this letter was typed. I shall send a special message to be delivered by you if I do not go myself. Yours sincerely
May Wright Sewall↓
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