Dear Miss Addams,
I have your two letters of May 14, and after consulting with Mrs. Andrews and Mrs. Winslow, we have agreed that there seems no reason for pressing a meeting of the thirty-five committee this June. We had a special work last year of working out our program and as the war will apparently continue for a year or more, and there is no new task for us to perform a meeting seems quite unnecessary when it involves so much expense and trouble for you and others who come from a distance.
You say nothing about the meeting of the Board which I supposed we were to have in June and had hoped might be timed to connect with the June meeting of the Minimum program committee. It is not essential to hold this meeting for any purpose that I know except to push work against the military training bills. I see no other work that we can do now with our small funds. We seem to be embarked on a war of attrition and even if we had money would have to work very cautiously to produce any effect whatever.
I shall approve of not holding a board meeting unless you make it convenient to come to the Minimum Program committee which I suppose will meet for the last time late in June. We could then meet in New York and have a useful conference even if there is no special business. My article on nomination and election of delegates to the Peace Conference who represent the people will probably be published by the Public as they have not returned it. I had thought of tabulating the replies to the questionnaire and making an article about them but they have been on the whole unsatisfactory and showed little thought so I have abandoned that idea.
I shall now be at home for some time busy on some writing and perhaps Forum work. I am greatly pleased with the arrest of the 21 men at Bisbee and with the appearance of the pamphlet "The Truth About The I.W.W." I have just written some newspaper letters about these two evidences of interest in promoting justice.
I quite approve of closing the office through June, July, August and September.
I spend two afternoons a week with Mr. Mead. He reads the New Republic and Atlantic etc. and is keenly interested in the public news but his own personal problem remains as painful and unsettling as ever and some of the conditions are very hard to bear. He came home for two hours recently to "heaven," as he calls it, but the going back was almost too hard to bear.
Yours, affectionately,
Lucia Ames Mead. [signed]
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