Dear Miss Addams:
In reading over the Memorandum against the Lausanne Treaty ratification, I found that I should not be willing to take action in either direction without further study. My inclination would be to support it on the grounds that is in conformity with our principles, and I have considerable confidence in Mr. Villard's judgement on such matters.
I showed it to Mrs. Post, who hesitated to pass [a judgment] also. I certainly should not join in with the majority of the people who signed the protest against it. I asked Mrs. Manley, who is connected with Senator [La Follette], and Mrs. Haines to give me further information in regard to it, if they found out anything new.
I am sorry that I gave the wrong impression to Mrs. Spencer. I found that she had brought home quite a different point of view from Chicago, and the New York Branch was quite antagonistic in its attitude toward the Congress. She spoke in a way which [led] me to feel that she felt the national executive committee had overridden your better judgment, and I think I said to her that you favored our issuing the invitation. But I did not mean in any way to infer that you were eager for the International Executive Committee to have issued the invitation.
In regard to your being interested in political work, Mrs. Spencer said that she has hoped you would go out speaking, as I understood her, in favor of a presidential candidate. I think I said that I did not feel that you were as interested to do that as you were to develop our international relationships. Certainly I must have [page 2] bungled it badly, to have given Mrs. Spencer such an idea.
I think I shall write her a letter of explanation, since it is too bad for us to have misunderstandings between us. Thank you for sending me a copy of your letter to her.
The New York situation has always been a difficult one. Miss Miller was engaged last winter to organize their work, and has done a great deal, but has found it most difficult to get a [coordinated] activity on the part of the Committee. They neither disbanded nor planned for the summer work, with the result that she continued at her own expense, and when she has suggested that she had better resign, Mrs. Leach, I believe, has said that it would not do any good as they would not accept it.
Meantime, the burden still falls upon Miss Miller to raise the budget.
Mrs. Spencer came in the early spring, and raised about $500.00 for the local work, and then decided that she ought to turn it over to the national and disband the New York local committee, because she wishes to [coordinate] the work with the League of Women Voters. It did not seem to me it was feasible to disband all the local committees and attempt to carry on a national office only in connection with the international work of interpreting the European situation in America.
I fancy there will always be a difference of opinion in the New York group in regard to the method of procedure.
Mrs. Trimble sounds very hopeful. I will see if there is any possibility of our working out a plan to proceed here. There is some difficulty in doing this, as we have no local groups in some of the places where she would go, and I have a feeling that she can feel out the situation in going from town to town better than we can from here.
It is the same way with Mrs. Fuldheim. I wonder if it would be possible for Miss Roberts to work out the meetings in Wisconsin for her. I am writing Mrs. Roberts today, and Mrs. Trimble, and will see what I can do to help. [page 3]
The circulars have come, and are much appreciated here. The great call is for absolute dates, both for the Congress and for the Summer School. Miss Glücklich writes that she can do little without them.
We have an Executive Committee meeting on Thursday in Philadelphia. If you have suggestions for me, will you send them in care of Mrs. Mildred Scott Olmsted, 20 South 12th Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
I am enclosing a summary which Miss Moore is making of the resolutions already taken. Mrs. Post is loaning us some material which gives the background of the Peace [programs] here in America before the War, and we will make a resume of that also. If we could get this out to our membership, it ought to put them in much better shape to discuss questions that may be brought up at the Congress.
Mrs. Post suggests that we discuss the results of the Bok Peace Award. The International Executive Committee undoubtedly wants suggestions for the agenda at the earliest possible moment. I think I will give this one to Miss Glücklich.
Sincerely,
National Secretary.
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