10th [November], 1924.
Dear Miss Balch,
You will have received, since your last letter has been written, my letter of October 8th (registered), in which I answered -- very late, alas! -- Miss Addams' and your joint letter of August 1st, as well as the acknowledgement of the [check] of Fr. 2500.- we sent on October 31st.
I am awfully sorry to know that the U.S. Section has to meet such very great financial difficulties, and I am feeling guilty for all the European Sections for not being able to give us efficient help. Miss Heymann has sent them a very energetic appeal, but the German Section has so far been the only one to announce that they have raised 600 francs, while they do not yet know whether they will be able to continue their own work longer than for one or two months more. I told them that I should ask for it as soon as it is needed here, nourishing the secret hope that it could perhaps be left ↑with them↓ for the further work with them.
It is certainly not ill will on their part; I know that the British Section had to give up the Cafeteria because they could not cover its deficit; I know that the Hungarian Section has lived the last two years only on account of a subvention out of the Leslie fund which allowed them to keep their office on that account and to give the small amount they can raise at home to Peace work. The French Section would never accept our small contribution, could it hope to be supported by its own members etc.
I feel it my duty to show you what is the present situation of our office: besides the [check] you kindly have sent me, we have a marge of about 1000 francs. -- not quite the amount we ought to hold as a remainder of the last Summer School and of the Peace Missions. This will cover the rent of 700 fr. on December first, but not the printer's [page 2] bill for Dr. Woker's article, of which I have ordered several thousands in each language. Should not some unexpected income arrive, I shall have to draw on the German contribution, which this year will no more be a quantité nègligeable.
As I have two pamphlets from the Chicago Summer School still lying here for distribution to European A.M.s and other addresses, I can use them instead of the next two publications; for the American members, I shall try to get out a News letter every month, leaving the distribution to the Washington office. This will make it easy for me to bear the strangulation of our publications here by the British Executive Committee. I do not know however if I shall be able to issue the Halfyearly Report the Congress voted to be published. (For the moment, I have very little material for it yet).
As our office would become in this way a merely administrative collector of correspondence and literature, it seems to me that we could go further in [economizing]. Our members from abroad are many times more interested in the queer little house than in the work of the office and the League; the staff of the League of Nations can be reached as well by letters as by personal calling on them personally; the correspondence with out sections could be done as well from another place: could not we reduce our staff here to one faithfull person who need not be a graduate, trying to find somebody to run the house as a pleasant little boarding house, and charging e.g. the French Section, as France is now the most [inexpensive] country in Europe, to have one person in charge of the important correspondence which could be forwarded to them from here? They could issue a News letter every month as well, and its duplicating and postage would be much cheaper from there than from here.
I really feel that without the possibility of editorial work, of meetings or speaking tours or mission work to be done or at least [organized] from here, the office has no raison d'étre. It would become about what the International Peace Bureau which is now in Geneva, and I do not feel tempted to be exactly the kind of bureaucratic pacifist as M. Golay.
In telling you all this, I am inspired exclusively by my sincere devotedness to the aims of our work, and by the keen sense of responsibility which does not allow me to accept a position in which I cannot do all that belongs to its obligations, as far as I understand.
I am sending copies of this letter to Miss Addams, Mrs. Ramondt, and Mme. Duchene.
With kindest regards
yours affectionately
Comments