Dear Miss Addams:
As you probably have heard, the Board of Directors of the Dutch Anti-War Council, which has been doing some of the best peace work since the war opened, has undertaken the creation of "A Central Organization for a Durable Peace". Its manifest has been sent far and wide and its Minimum Program has attracted much attention. It is composed of some of the finest and most responsible men in Holland, and its purpose is to add five or six men and women from each of the nations of Europe and twenty-five from the United States, representing all professions and walks of life, which shall constitute a sort of permanent council. They go further and hope that delegates from those various groups, if not all the groups themselves, shall sit in permanent session at The Hague until the war is over.
The movement has attracted much attention in Europe and they have been able to enroll some of the finest men and women. From Germany, for instance, there are such men as Professor Quidde, F. Siegmund Schultze, Graf Georg von Arco; from Austria, Dr. Ernst [Trösch]; from Budapest, Professor Zipernowsky.
The Americans who are being [invited] are the following: Messrs. William Howard Taft, Oscar S. Straus, David Starr Jordan, A. Lawrence Lowell, Samuel Gompers, Thomas Raeburn White, Hamilton Holt, Frederick Lynch, Theodore Marburg, John R. Mott, William I. Hull, George W. Kirchwey, Charles H. Levermore, Louis P. Lochner, George Foster [page 2] Peabody, Charles S. Macfarland, Meyer London, Irving Fisher, John [Bates] Clark, George W. Nasmyth, Leo S. Rowe, Miss Jane Addams, Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews, President Mary Emma Woolley, Miss Emily Balch, Mrs. J. M. Forbes.
The writers of this letter, who have been asked to create the American group, feel that this movement has in it more potency, perhaps, than almost any other that is now on foot. It falls into perfect harmony with the suggestion that Miss Addams brings home from Europe, that a group of responsible people sitting together in conference at this time, watching the struggle, making offers as opportunity opens, formulating a program to submit to the attention of the world the moment the war is over, is the one thing most greatly needed.
It also is the next thing to a conference of the neutral nations and perhaps would be one of the most direct steps towards that end.
If you would like to see one of us before answering this letter, we should be very glad indeed to call upon you and go into further details. We earnestly hope that you will [not] decline until at least further [correspondence] has passed between us or we have seen you, because of the importance of having such people as yourself upon this group. It must be really representative or it amounts to nothing.
Yours very respectfully,
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