My dear Miss Addams
It is so long since I have seen you and the letter I [intended] to send you so long delayed!
I have had very strenuous times since I saw you. My sister had a cerebral hemorrhage June 2nd and I spent the summer near her [although] for a part of the time in the hills. She has been in three sanitariums since her attack and is only now, since the 3rd of Feb., finally settled in a satisfactory manner and for permanent care.
She is paralyzed on the right side but her mind alert, lungs and heart sound and general health good for one just past her 80th birthday.
She is established in a Home for Incurables for her life, where, by the transference of Annuity and other property security is obtained for her permanent care in what is considered one of the best institutions for such helpless [people] in New England.
It is a great good fortune for it is difficult to get in where so many unfortunate invalids want to be.
I feel for the first time that I can take a long breath and think of my own affairs with mental freedom.
And the first thing I did after my sister was finally placed on the permanent list and settled in this sanitarium was to accept a waiting invitation to go to Europe as the “Ambassador” of the American Social Hygiene Assn. That invitation came last Nov. and I had to keep them [wa] [page 2] waiting for a final answer until I felt wholly secure about her.
There was a call from England and Geneva for me to go to present the historic review at the Memorial Meeting for Josephine Butler as one of the oldest “links” with ther early social purity work.
Doubtless you have also been appealed to to help at some one of the meetings now in arrangement for this end.
The first meeting is expected to be held at Geneva and linked up with the newer work for the abolition of traffic in women and children. I sail the 13th of June reaching Geneva in season for this meeting.
Then it was felt I could attend, as delegate from two organizations, the International Education meeting at [Edinburgh] and later the Universal Conference of Christian Life and Work at Stockholm. I have gone on the new Commission on the Family of the National Y.W.C.A. and it is important, we all feel that there should be close cooperation on this subject between social workers and religious groups of the more progressive type.
I expect to be back early in Sept. You will be glad that such a wonderful opportunity for service and enjoyment has come to me.
As Daughter says “this is the first time you could go in so many years and now you have the chance.”
I am more than ever busy as when I was uncertain about expense for my sister I took more paid work than I have done for several years so as not to come short for her needs, and as it would not be right to get out of engagements hastily for others plans, I have much to add to private preparations for the trip.
However, I am so uplifted by what seems the very best thing for my sister’s care that could be arranged that I feel strong enough for the tasks that wait for me, [although] I do get tired once in a while, I have thought so often of you. I have wanted to see you so much since the fiasco of the Women’s Council affiliation ↑of the W.I.L.↓ especially. I couldn’t refrain from unholy glee to see that the effort of Mrs Catt’s Conference to keep unspotted from the W.I.L.P.F. did not save it from being attacked by the military and naval leaders as a part of the “red” and “pacifistic” peril! But nevertheless I am profoundly glad, for the sake of peace work, that the Conference did try to make it easy for the conservatives to speak out for the abolition of war.
There were about twenty of the W.I.L.P.Fs. there as delegates from other organizations but I think I was the only [simon-pure] member to speak.
Dear Miss Addams, you were applauded when Mrs.Catt, [although] declaring her entire divorce from the W.I.L.P.F. people, spoke warmly of you personally and when I spoke of the picture that future historians of the war would show, of the meeting of women from 15 countries while the Great War was still raging, to affirm the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man, there was continued applause from many delegates who were glad to get a chance to show a peace devotion that never faltered.
Now tell me, dear friend, if there is anything I can do in the little free time I shall have at Geneva, and whom I should see as a prime necessity.
And do tell me how you are in health, and how things are going with you in all ways.
I am, as always, your loving and constant friend,
Anna Garlin Spencer [signed]
↑March 9, 1925.↓
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