Dear Miss Addams:
Many thanks for your letter of the 4th.
I hope very much that you will reconsider your decision not to undertake writing a paper on the philosophy of the settlement. The International Conference is going to be sadly hampered by the absence of most of the finest American settlement workers. The program as developed by the English committee seems more notable so far for lack of settlement quality than for anything else. A long list of names printed on the preliminary statement includes almost no people with actual settlement experience.
I wish that you might feel able to prepare a statement for the International Conference that would parallel your two papers on the Subjective and Objective Necessity of Settlements. More than anyone else among us, you are identified on both the philosophical and practical sides, with the ideals and outreachings of internationalism. You could, as no one else, bring together the hopes of the early with the later stage of settlement thought. It would, I think, be very helpful if your paper could be translated into French and German, and so available for delegates from these two countries. Miss Coolidge has discovered about twenty French settlements in and about Paris and something in the nature of a French association has been formed. The possibilities inherent in the meeting are momentous.
Is there any chance of your being in the East during April or May? If there is, I should like to call an executive committee meeting so that some of the topics connected with the International Federation could be taken up and talked over.
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