13th January, 1925.
Dear Miss Addams,
I was very glad indeed to get you letter about the restatement of the W.I.L. Object and to learn ↑that you think↓ the extreme form is undesirable. It seems to me, now that the British Section has made its position clear, our best plan would be to let the matter rest until the next Congress and then bring forward a resolution embodying a new statement of the aims of the League. I think it should be unnecessary to raise the question of the point of order. I really only did this in order to justify the action of the British Section. In the meantime we shall make use of whatever formula our Annual Council adopts. At present it runs: --
(1) to establish the principles of right rather than might and of [cooperation] rather than conflict in national and international affairs;
(2) the emancipation of women.
This may, however, be modified or extended at our Council Meeting next February, and if so I will keep you informed of whatever wording may be adopted. I think the American Statement of the Object is a very good one. I have also received a copy of the French statement from Madame Jouve and, like the American one, it does not entirely reflect the wording adopted at Washington. I quite agree with what you say as to the feeling in the disarmed countries and appreciate the views of our members who think they ought to take an extreme stand, although I do not agree with them. I do not think this sort of action is really fruitful. [page 2]
As regards the situation in Constantinople, I am delighted to hear that Miss Balch is going there and hope we may have the pleasure of seeing her in England on her way, and talking matters over with her. I should judge that Miss [Youssouff] is rather easily swayed by the people amongst whom she finds herself, for she was certainly not urging the pledge when we were in Constantinople, but rather seemed to be taking the view of the other women. She did not, however, say very much and may merely have been refraining from expressing her opinion. Turkish women have been so much in retirement in the past that it is especially difficult for them to go forward and form an [organization]. Besides which, they are hampered by the present Government which forbids the formation of any political [organization] whatever, whether of men or women. This obliges them to camouflage their real object as some kind of philanthropy, as their statues have in any case to be submitted to the Government.
There is another aspect of the W.I.L which has been very much on my mind since I was in Geneva last September. I mean the management of the W.I.L. Headquarters by Vilma Glücklich. I have been thinking of writing to you personally on this subject, but now matters have been brought to a head by Vilma Glücklich's action over the Egyptian protest, and the Executive Committee of the British Section have asked me to write to you on their behalf.
As regards my own experiences at International House last September when Dr. Hilda Clark and I were staying there together, I should like to say how delightfully the hostel side of the house is managed by Miss Holmes. She makes it all so comfortable and easy for visitors, everything seems to run so smoothly and she is so welcoming to callers of all kinds, that I am sure many people who do not know the amount of personal effort that is required to produce a well-oiled domestic machine, cannot suspect how much she herself puts into it. It would be a very great loss if she had to leave Geneva and I do not see how she could be replaced. It would be hard to find anyone who combines her personality and the many unusual qualities which make her so exactly the right person for the work.
It is on the political side that the Headquarters of the League falls so lamentably short and this is all the more regrettable when one considers the almost endless opportunities which are offered by the activities of the League of Nations. I think all of us who know Vilma Glücklich have a real affection for her and a very great respect for her excellent qualities, not to speak of her entire devotion to the work. But it is perhaps just because she has the defects of her qualities she does not seem the right person at the League's Headquarters. She is so extremely modest and retiring that I think it is almost impossible for her to do all that [page 3] should be done in getting into touch with the Secretariat of the League and making her personality really felt in Geneva. Also she is so much taken up with what she conceives to be her principal business in correspondence, etc. with the Sections that she scarcely has sufficient time to carry on what I think most of us would consider more important activities. We also feel acutely that her political judgment is continually at fault. She seems, in fact, to treat everything which comes in in an entirely uncritical spirit and behaves as though our Headquarters were a place at which all protests and appeals were registered and passed on without any consideration or discrimination. I need scarcely give instances of this kind of thing, as they are no doubt as familiar to you as they are to us. Her action in regard to the Egyptian crisis was perhaps the most striking example. She does not say who "the Egyptian women" are for whom she professes herself to speak, so that [it] is quite impossible to tell whether the protest has any weight behind it. Secondly, she drafted a telegram the wording of which showed her to be extraordinarily out of touch with the real course of events. Thirdly, she sent it to the British Foreign Minister without consulting the British Section, and Fourthly, she signed it with your name without consulting you. The whole incident seems to show that, on the one hand, her judgment is not to be depended on, and on the other she has a rather dangerous conception of what her duties are. She has recently sent out to the Press from the W.I.L. a telegram from Albanian women, once again without reference to the quarter from which it comes, or to the fact that of course it represents one side in a controversy. She wrote to us a little time back urging us to go on a deputation to the Peruvian delegation in London on a subject upon which she was not fully informed and upon which obviously we could take no action, not being informed ourselves.
All these things, but in particular, her entire failure to get into any real touch with the personnel of the League of Nations at Geneva makes us feel that it is very important that there should, if possible, be a change of International Secretary. Dr. Clark and I were very much struck when we were in Geneva by the fact that the League is very little known and that as far as we could judge, in so far as delegates to the Assembly read the circulars which Vilma Glücklich had sent to them, they regarded them as rather foolish and put them in the wastepaper basket.
I know that Vilma Glücklich herself feels quite inadequate to the position and is worried about it, and I know that she does her very best to according to her rather limited conception of what the work of an International Secretary should be.
Would it not be possible to find someone with real political [page 4] judgment and knowledge of international affairs, someone who would command the respect of the members of the League of Nations Secretariat, who could hold her own with them and keep in touch with the activities of the League? After all, it was for this purpose that we established our Headquarters in Geneva and it seems to me that for all we do in this direction they might almost as well be in any little town in Europe. Yet the existence of the House with its Hostel gives us such opportunities that if we had a real leader there it might count for a great deal. We want someone who, in addition to the other qualities I have mentioned will combine personal initiative with a sense of responsibility to the National Sections. Do you know an archangel of this kind who would be willing to go to Geneva? I cannot help thinking that the House would gain in prestige if the archangel could be of American or British nationality, but this may be mere Anglo-Saxon pride and prejudice and of course she must be good at languages. In the meantime, I don't really know how the International Secretary is appointed nor whether you think it would be advisable to make a change. It would, I am sure, be extremely difficult to find the right person for the work, but if it were possible to do so, I believe it would make a very great difference to the whole effectiveness of the W.I.L.
Yours affectionately,
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