My dear Miss Addams:
Miss Surles tells me that [she only] have enough of the announcements of the Summer School to be sent to international members. If you think that these should go to the branches to be sent about we would have to call on you for an extra supply.
If you think this should be done I should be very glad to get them out at once.
I have this morning dictated a letter to you which will be carried by hand by Mrs. Solly, South African member of the W.I.L. she has given some very interesting side lights on the International Council meeting here and I think it is fairly valuable to get that W.I.L. point of view that is from one of the foreign delegates.
Last night I was invited to dinner at the Women’s University Club. It was a small dinner of about fifty people in honor of Frau [Mende], a woman member of the German Reichstag and of Frau von Hülsen, a socialist. Both, I believe, are going on to Chicago.
Both of them spoke after dinner on purely political Germany, but after their regular address questions were asked and someone wanted to know about the progress of the Peace Movement in Germany. Frau von Hülsen, who is a most charming, spirited and animated young person and who in speaking quite won the hearts of everyone because of her delightful personality, arose and paid you a very beautiful tribute as the “guiding star” of the Peace Movement, etc. Then she proceeded in the most ruthless way to tear the German Section of the W.I.L. into tiny pieces and to grind them under her heel verbally, so to speak. Personally, I was so unhappy about this that I could hardly bear it but was as controlled as possible. It seems so hard to have to sit and listen to this type of thing from people who should be our friends. [page 2]
[The main] criticism seemed to be that the group in Germany were [uncooperative] and thoroughly unpatriotic. If one did not know that a German were speaking one might well have felt that it was a criticism of our own U.S. Section.
I felt that it was most unfortunate that these German women, who apparently are having a good deal of influence here in Washington among the women of such organizations as the League of Women Voters, the University Women, the Y.W.C.A, etc., should be giving our German Section such an unhappy name.
One of the chief resentments of Frau von Hülsen against the German Section was the fact that the latter had not even invited the women members of the Reichstag to meet you at the Congress in Vienna. As far as I could gather this was one of the most tremendous insults which has been perpetrated by our German group.
Personally, I was not so affected by this, as Frau [Mende] the day before in a conversation which I had with her had told me quite frankly that Hugo Stinnes had been her strongest supporter; that she believed there was never any chance of international peace; that Germany was experiencing the meaning of insecurity by having no army and with France as vicious as she is it would be quite necessary to have a German army as quickly as possible. And when she spoke about going to Chicago and asked me if I knew anyone there for her to meet and I suggested you she apparently had never heard of you and repeated your name over and over again in order to get it in her mind.
Thus the story of Frau van Hülsen at the University Club last night and the ladies of the Reichstag had been permanently insulted by the German Section because they had not been invited to go to Vienna to be introduced to you does seem a little flat.
That the German Section are thoroughly unpatriotic, very "radicalinsky" and consistently [uncooperative] were the other [notes] that Frau von Hülsen stressed, all of which Frau [Mende] agreed to most emphatically. The latter finally arose and said that a country must be truly nationalistic before it could possibly begin to think about having any international peace policy.
I am writing you all this because I know that both Frau [Mende] and Frau von Hülsen intend to see you and because I feel that if they publicly denounced the German Section before this rather influential group of people here that you may wish as [page 3] the president of the international to talk to them about this.
I think it was most unfortunate that they should have so condemned our German Section and if they did it here at this dinner, they will probably do it freely anywhere else. Also the thing that I think was the hardest to bear was the fact that the more they were condemned the more heartily did the dinner party applaud.
I confess, I went home and went to bed, [heartsick] about it all.
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