May 12, 1920
My dear Miss Addams:
During the last few weeks I have had several conferences with Raymond Fosdick, until recently Asst.-Under Secretary General of the League of Nations, who very recently returned from abroad. He tells me serious discussions are going on downtown, particularly among the Red Cross people, along precisely the line you had in mind at the Conference held at the Mid-day Association when we were Mr. Paul Warburg's guests. Apparently men like Mr. Davison and Mr. [Wadsworth] are convinced that unless something is done in a large way to assist Eastern Europe to get on its feet more economically the chaos now present there will spread indefinitely.
Despite the obvious need for American financial cooperation there is no apparent prospect now of getting from our government even the minimum appropriations necessary. The Red Cross people are considering the question of a national campaign to arouse our people to a sense of the situation in the hope that then Washington might consider seriously some such proposal as that recently made by Mr. [Wadsworth]. This, in effect, was the creation of a revolving fund of five hundred million, or perhaps a billion dollars, to be administered by a small board and made available in the places [strategically] most important.
It goes without saying that such funds would be made available only on certain basic considerations such as the relinquishment of imperialistic [programs] by the countries to be favored, the carrying out of a real [program] of disarmament, etc. Do you think that our people could be stirred to favor this process of salvaging Europe? [page 2]
Now another subject -- Carrying out the preliminary steps looking towards an International Conference of Liberals, as suggested in the last point in the [program] adopted by our Executive Committee on April 15th, and printed on the first page of the April Bulletin, we are beginning correspondence with various Associations throughout the world. To whom should our correspondence with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom be addressed? To you as President, or to some of the officials abroad?
The Mexican situation has been going from bad to worse during the last few weeks, and we are forced to go back almost to the situation in 1915-16 in our fight against intervention. It is most discouraging, though the explanation is simple enough. The army got out of hand. This, coupled with the systematic vilification and misrepresentations carried on in our press against Carranza so weakened him that his overthrow was comparatively easy. For whatever measure of disorder there may be during the period of readjustment in Mexico intervention agitation on this side of the border will be in part responsible.
It is interesting to see how Franklin K. Lane has already begun to earn his $50,000 a year salary as Vice-President of Mr. Doheny's Mexican Petroleum Company by his recent testimony before the Fall Committee investigating the Mexican situation. Our hope now is that the victory of the rebels will be so complete that there will be little excuse for intervention agitation, but even at the best we are now at the beginning of a long, hard struggle against a peculiarly unworthy Mexican war.
Very sincerely yours,
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