July 12th, '18
My dear Miss Addams:
I am hoping to get your support for a certain special part of the work we are doing here through our forty agents in 19 foreign countries. We are trying to find some well known educator in each country who will help to place in the educational journals material written by our educators here and who in return will send us educational articles from his country to be published in the general magazines and educational journals of the United States. For this [we] have already secured effective cooperation from McClure's and Everybody's magazines, as well as from more technical journals.
A large part of this material will deal with problems of reconstruction facing the world in the next years. In this re-building, the teachers of all nations will play, we believe, an immense and significant part. Certainly what is taught to the children of all nations will mold to a large degree their attitude later as men and women; and therefore no more fruitful and no more democratic way of promoting idealism, world-wide peace, justice, liberty and mutual tolerance could be found than through such an interchange of opinion between educators throughout the world.
We feel this cannot be started too soon, and we are therefore trying to build up a true picture of the schools and colleges, settlements, forums, churches, community centers and other forces making for education here. In such a picture, one of the books that we prize most is your "Spirit of Youth and the City Street". Will you write for us now a brief article ↑about 1000 words↓ giving your feeling as to the need of some such world-wide gathering of teachers -- and will you also give us your advice as to how we may best promote this plan?
Hoping to hear from you very soon,
Faithfully yours,
Ernest Poole [signed]
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