October 16th, 1919
My dear Emily Balch:
A perfect avalanche of material came from you yesterday and stirred into action my long-deferred letter which I have planned to write almost every day since I came home. I can only say in my defense that I have been uncommonly busy in dozens of ways and first waited until we should have a Board meeting and after that until our plans were a little clearer after the annual meeting of the Woman's Peace Party.
At the Board meeting we decided to turn the W.P.P. into a national Council with representatives from the local branches and to give each local branch complete autonomy. We issued the proper notices for the change in the Constitution and at the annual meeting to be held in Philadelphia the third and fourth of November I have no doubt that the proper action will be taken. This change of plan came about because the Boston Branch seems to be breaking up and the New York situation you already know. We will urge as many people as possible to join the national and international membership of five dollars which entitles them to a dollar membership in the National and four dollars for international membership fee. The balance of one dollar we want, due to the international, we want to subsidize. I append a statement of this hereto. Of course, this subsidy should not appear in your accounts. If the meeting takes some other action we will let you know promptly. I think we will work more effectively than we did in the old way and any local branch [that] wants to have a study class or any other similar activity will, of course, be free to go ahead.
We are sending a thousand dollars by Miss Cheever. It was the thousand that Mrs. Spencer did not use. You remember it had been given to me rather personally to use as I thought best. Will you take out of it two year memberships in the international for the following persons, at ten dollars.
Mrs. Charles Crane, ↑31 W. 12th↓ Washington, D.C. ↑N.Y.C.↓
Miss Alice Lewisohn, 265 Henry Street, New York City
Miss Mary Rozet Smith, 12 West Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois
Miss Dorothy North, 7 West Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois
The Misses Robson, 5555 Hyde Park Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois
Mrs. Henry Leach, 829 Park Avenue ↑170 East 64th↓, New York City
The Misses Colvin, Lake Forest, Illinois
Miss Mary A. Burnham, [8401] Powelton Avenue, Philadelphia, Penn.
Mrs. Charles Rhoads, 1914 Rittenhouse Square, [Philadelphia, Penn.]
Mrs. Felix Warburg, 1109 Fifth Avenue, New York City
Mrs. George Mead, [1537] East Sixtieth St., Chicago, Illinois
Mrs. H. G. Shaw, Boston, Massachusetts.
Mrs. Frank Lillie, 5801 Kenwood Avenue, Chicago, Illinois [page 2]
Mrs. Samuel Dauchy, 525 Hawthorne Place, Chicago, Illinois
Miss Lillian D. Wald, 265 Henry Street, Chicago New York City
Mrs. Lucille Lowenstein, St. Louis, Missouri
Mrs. Joseph Fels, New York City, 122 East 37th Street,
Mrs. Wm. Templeton [Johnson], 651 Ocean Boulevard, Coronado, California
Mrs. Lucia Ames Mead, 19 Euston Road, Brookline, Mass.
Miss Jane Addams, Hull-House, 800 South Halsted St., Chicago, Ill.
With the exception of myself and Mrs. Mead, these are all people who gave largely to our fund. I have written to each one saying that she would be made an international member and receive the News Sheet, etc. This will make at ten dollars each, (two years membership) two hundred dollars. We would like to have two hundred dollars worth of the Reports for the U.S.A. which I think had better be sent to Hull-House as it would be easier to distribute them from here, the office of the International President. Then will you put aside the balance as a special fund from which we will subsidize at one dollar each the international members who are sent in to you through our National office. The Board decided that we could not ask people to join a national for one dollar and the international for five more and that for the first year we would make this special offer of a membership of five dollars to both the National and the International. Of course, it is most unlikely that we should have anywhere near six hundred members but perhaps you will keep it as a special fund and I am sure there will be something else distinctively pertaining to the U.S.A. for which we may want to use it through the International office. We are very grateful to Miss Cheever for taking this money over. I am anxious to have it taken out of the U.S.A. account before Mrs. Taussig ceases to be treasurer as I do not want the new treasurer to start with an undue feeling of plethora.
Shall I go back to your letter of August fourth containing the vote. I voted for C in regard to the News Sheet. It seems to me your News Sheet Number 3 printed in different languages according to the character of the matter, is quite ideal. Just here I want to say a little more about the Sheepshanks matter. I am very glad it has come out as it has. It would be not only impossible to raise the money but I am sure from the character of the material that it is essential that the News Sheet should be issued from the Central office. You may feel that I lost my head in London over the prospect of securing Miss Sheepshanks. I was much impressed by the vast amount of material collected by Mrs. Buxton and others in regard to the Feed the Famine funds -- the type of material in which I was especially interested, but we would have to be very much more specialized in order to use it advantageously and I am delighted with the variety and vigor of the matter you are handling at Geneva.
In reply to your question in regard to feeding the Austrian children, let me tell you what Mr. Hoover is now doing. The American Relief Administration was given up July first, 1919 and almost immediately afterwards to the European Childrens Fund, or as it is sometimes called, the European Childrens Relief, was started as its successor. Its headquarters are at 115 Broadway, New York. Edgar Rickard, who was purchaser for Mr. Hoover in this country, is there and also Herbert L. Sutterson. They with the remnant of the Shipping Board and others are administering a fund of nine million dollars which Mr. Hoover had on hand augmented by grants from the various governments. With this they are feeding school children of [Yugoslavia], Austria, Hungary, [Romania], Serbia, [Czechoslovakia], Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Various groups of immigrants are giving to the special funds. There is an American [Yugoslavic] Relief with headquarters at [501] Fifth Avenue, Miss Lucille Cochran is in charge and there are other such funds. I saw Mr. Rickard on my return, also Dr. Vernon Kellogg in Washington, Willoughby Walling of the Executive Committee of the National Red Cross and ↑as↓ many other people as I could. [page 3]
They are all stirred up in regard to Austria and Hungary and while it may be some time before Germany is included and there seems to be much confusion in regard to goods being sent to Bulgaria, I hope that the European Childrens Fund will grow space and receive much help. I am, of course, doing a lot of speaking and we can only hope that in time the nationalistic lines will no longer hold where starving children are concerned. Miss [Cumming] is here representing English Friends ↑Funds,↓ who are, of course, sending wherever they find the greatest need and there are many indications that old animosities are breaking up.
I think the English proposal is a very good one in regard to the finance Committee. I hope very much that it will go through. It is impossible to tell as yet how difficult it would be to raise any large sum of money. At the present moment the food question is so pressing. I had two thousand dollars sent in to me by readers of the Survey article but I am sure no such sum would have been forthcoming on behalf of the organization as such.
In regard to the statement of objects, I like the last two paragraphs of the British W.[I].L. statement of objects, but not the first one, which seems [to] me a little feeble. It seems to me on the whole that the present statement with a little explanation that we do not require literal acceptance of every resolution, is the best.
And of course I voted "3 C -- No" in regard to the literal acceptance of every resolution. I should say that your explanation to Miss Tybjerg and others was quite ideal.
I am so glad that Miss Cheever has her passport and will sail November first. I know how lonely you must have been although you have been ↑an↓ awfully good sport about it. Do try to go slowly. Fraulein [Heymann] wrote that you looked thin and overworked and I am sure you know that none of us want that. Please do not feel for one moment uncomfortable about your salary. It is all right and I say to every one who has any business to know that your salary was the same as that you had at Wellesley and I am sure that can but seem reasonable.
I am somewhat scared about your going to London and am afraid that even if you do get your vises for one way, you may not get back again. Several of the required vises represent those who are none too friendly to our project. I should be for letting Miss MacNaughton and the others bring the news of the English Conference to me rather than to try to go myself. Of course, this may represent over-caution on my part and you are on the spot and in a good deal better position to know.
You have a house beside the road in a very literal sense and you should not allow [traveling] pacifists to eat you up.
I am writing to Dr. [Salomon] and will send her the Survey. I missed her very much in Berlin. I spoke one evening at the University when we met a great many of the people whom we had seen through her in 1915.
I am sure that after our meeting in Philadelphia, on November third and fourth, that you will be cheered in regard to the movement in the U.S.A. but I do not think that the enthusiasm has waned so much as it is a matter of [regrouping] and finding a new channels.
I am awfully glad that you are trying to get reports as to the milk situation in the devastated region and elsewhere. We got much interested in the situation both in Germany and through a number of people we met in Holland and I hope that you may be able to do something from this end. [page 4]
Will you please give my love to Frau Hertzka and do have her understand that my enthusiasm over Miss Sheepshanks publishing the paper in English always included an edition with vigorous additions published in Vienna. I hope her mission into Eastern Europe will go through and as to the Siberian prisoners I hear about them constantly, certainly every time I speak to an audience of American Germans. We have made some feeble efforts in their behalf and mean to take the matter up with more vigor at our annual meeting.
I have never favored ratifying the peace treaty [unreservedly] and have always said that I hope the Covenant would go through as it seemed the best possible and that the Senate would insist upon changes in the treaty. In point of fact, however, I have done no speaking upon the subject as the food situation has taken every bit of time I had.
I am sure you will let me say how vigorous and fine it seems to me your start is in Geneva. I hope we are going to be able to send you a [reassuring] report of the situation here soon.
Always affectionately yours,
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