St. Barnabas Day. June 11th 1917.
Dear Miss Addams: --
If it be possible for me, within the limits of frankness and courtesy, to ask you please to cease these pacifist addresses which the papers have lately been quoting from your lips, I beg the favor of so requesting. This is no time for criticisms of the internal conditions obtaining in our own land, if these criticisms can in the least degree be made to tell against our Nation's terrible duty as Prussianization's foe. And if you have been at all correctly reported of late, your pacifist addresses have certainly been couched in such terms as to bear that very heavy responsibility. "The Hun is at the gate", and if you do not believe this, may I please beg, in all courtesy, to point you to the vast number of very able and noble-hearted men and women, who are in full possession of every datum which can possibly be known to yourself, and who do believe it, up to the hilt.
If you cannot come out, as so many splendid men and women are doing every day, in this time of fearful crisis, and support the Nation's [cadets?] in the war, then please let me beg of you to seal your lips, lest you should add to the dangers which are thickening around everything that we have stood for as a Nation. Faithfully Yours,
John Henry Hopkins. [signed]
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