April 3, 1915
My dear Miss Addams:
I have just received your letter of March 30, asking the American Peace Society to send a representative to the International Congress of Women at The Hague.
I regret to say that it does not seem possible for us to be represented officially at the meeting, though most of us are heartily in sympathy with its purposes. We have not the funds with which to send a delegate at our own expense, and have therefore even had to decline the invitation of the Dutch Anti-War Council to send official representatives to the Conference which they have initiated for the 7th to the 10th of April.
In the case of the Women's Congress, some of the gentlemen on our Executive Committee have felt that were we to appoint someone a representative, it might be taken that we were as a Society endorsing the "suffrage" part of the program. Hence in the case of the request of Mrs. Rose M. French to be made our delegate, the Committee voted not to do so, on this account. Personally I am, as you know, an earnest advocate of woman's suffrage, but I can only speak for myself and not for the American Peace Society as an organization.
I am exceedingly glad that the women of our country are responding so heartily to the new women's peace movement, and I trust that the International Congress will be the means of welding together the women peace workers of every country <in a great campaign to end war forever>
Yours very sincerely,
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