6-1-1924
Dear Miss Addams
I now know a little what the outside of Hull House looks like. What the inside feels like I have some little notion too, from having known a little (all too little) of the spirit who animates it. I thank you for sending me this etching of the earlier photograph from which I have seen reproduced & have always loved. Through the kindness of Mr. Maynard I also now possess a [better] one of you which I saw in his room at Woolwich & liked very much. So now I am rich.
I have scraps of news of you from various people & know you have been back at work for some time. I hope you are not much handicapped by your operation in Tokyo. I have had such excellent results from three big operations & was on the whole so happy after the worst pain was over that I have no dread of them. There's something very interesting about watching clever & ingenious folk at work mending one like a bit of china.
We are all somewhat startled at suddenly coming into power & finding the arch-villain, Mr. Macdonald, reported [page 2] verbatim & treated with respect as the coming Prime Minister. We knew it would come, but I think none of us thought it was to be so soon upon us. The Labour Party comes into such a tangle of evil that it will be hard to do right. Yet there is some hope to be found I think, in the weariness & disillusionment the world is feeling with regard to the old methods & if the Labour Party will be simple & direct & not go in for any mere tactics but do right as it sees the right, there may yet be a great revival of kind human feeling all over Europe.
We of the W.I.L. are, of course, overjoyed to have Margaret Bondfield in the House & -- as everyone thinks -- in the Ministry.
I am not sure how many of our people will get across to Washington in May but I hope a decent delegation. My heart will be with you but not my body -- That must abide here. I hope Miss Courtney-Catherine says she ought to go to Poland & in the meanwhile she seems always ailing. I think Miss Courtney has got a lot of work out of our people this year & that it was a very good move to put her at the head of this section. It has incidentally brought in Hilda Clark to do a great deal more for the W.I.L.
My love to you & good wishes for 1924,
Yours ever H. M. Swanwick
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