Emily Greene Balch to Jane Addams, May 24, 1925

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Constantinople
May 24.

Very dear J.A.,

Your letter of April twelfth from Colorado Springs reached me some time ago. How very interesting and inclusive the program of the Annual meeting was. I hope soon to hear how it went off. I don’t know where the sendings of the Wash. office are going to. I think I had nothing later than Feb. I want to know how finances stand & who was elected, [especially] as Sec'y.

I had a nice letter from Mrs. Lewis in London with her daughter, & sounding as if she were really better.

I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you and Miss Smith got to Mexico. Now when are you going to Haiti to see what our Section there may be (& might be)?

You do not say how much the germ in your throat may be. I do trust it has proved easily and quickly vanquished by the Colorado air. Someone had heard that you were ill but I trust this is the reflection of some short and passing trouble.

I expect to be at the Ex. Com meeting now set for July 10-15 in Innsbrück but if as now appears probably probable we have to sail from Cherbourg July 16 I may have to leave a little early. And even so as it is [page 2] the meeting is set too early for various people's convenience, especially Madam Ramondt's.

I am happy that Mrs. Swanwick is once more chairman of our Brit. Section. I think K C'y is so much more to the right than our membership in general that she intensifies the difficulty of our keeping together.

I think the ↑Ex.↓ meeting will be a difficult one with this question of who the Sec'yship up. The English idea of a perfectly new English person does not suit my ideas of what would work out well, at all. And If ↑both↓ VG & Mr Tunas both leave then w (and with Miss Holmes gone too) there will be a great break in continuity in Geneva anyway. Do you think me right to try to get ↑Gertrud↓ Baer? or Madame Ramondt if she would consider serving? Or Mlle. Gobat? or who? I don't suppose Mlle Gobat would do it.

Have you any instructions or information on the financial arrangements. ↑(Your letter of May 8, since rec'd.)↓

Have you any preference as to place and time of next Congress. If Y. H. is electioneering for Prague should you approve of that.

I think

Have you anything to advise me as to other points in the Agenda?

For instance as to wording of "Object.” [page 3]

I calculate that this letter ought to reach you about the middle of June which will give you a month to get a reply to me via Geneva.

To return to V. G. She certainly does make some awfully bad breaks. Besides the extremely serious one of using your name as she did, she somehow sent out ↑so that it came to M. Parren↓ a copy of a letter from Dr. [Budzińska]-Tylicka of Prague Warsaw in which a sharp criticism of Madame Parren [past] and our Greek section (so-called) was voiced and cried in such a way as to be (I suppose truly) put in the mouth of Madame Theodop Theodoropoulos another queen-bee in that hive, so that we have played the unhappy role of direct mischief-making, resulting in with a most difficult situation for Mm. Theodoropoulos and a direct putting of a spike in our own wheel. Now how could V.G. have blundered into that!

About the object I think Miss Courtney is all wrong in taking any [page 4] exception whatever to what was done at Wash. in this respect. I hope to write her about this in detail and to send you a copy of what I write her.

We ↑shall↓ have been here three weeks & a little over and I am speaking for the 7 5th time tomorrow -- once was at the Constantinople College ↑at Union of Turkish Women but 2 schools↓ once at the Am. Womens Club which was friendly. I quoted C.C.'s remarked before the Patriotic women. ↑[left margin note] At the latter I was asked to speak directly on the W.I.L.P.F.↓ I am afraid by the way poor Mrs. North has found her pillow [quite] as full of thorns even without the WIL as it well could be. I hope the opposition group may be discrediting themselves but there are enough people of the type to which they appeal in a total of a hundred & million to make quite a noise, tiny as their problem may be of [of] the whole.

In Athens I was to speak before the WIL. but the invitation turned out to be in the name of the Lyceum Club of wh. Mrs P. is also president.

Alexandra Joannides, whom I knew well in Geneva where she is was a postgrad student, is now here after at [page 5] her home here (to be married) after having recently lived in Athens where she has been working for the L. of N. Commission on Exchange of populations. She knows the Athens situation well and I wish I might have met her before instead of after my stay there. If she will act as Secy (as Madame Parren apparently would like) it would be the making of a ↑Greek↓ section wh. is now merely nominal. But she thinks that under Mme Parren she could do nothing. And yet -- as she will agree -- Mme Parren has is in many ways fine. I both respected & liked her far more that I expected to do. I thought my stay there (which was too to brief & troubled by my having a cold & losing my voice) did no harm and practically no good either. My lecture was on peace & war in a general way and peple people were I did not meet peoples minds very fruitfully, especially as my French was a foreign medium to both them & me. Madame Parren is really interested in the Chemical Warfare issue and had got together, for a whole series of discussions of it, a notable group of men including the Rector [page 6] of the University and the Head of the Chemical Service of the Greek Navy Dept. These gentlemen also met with me but of course I have to say that I don't believe you can abolish chemical warfare except by abolishing war.

I go on from here to Belgrade & Budapest & the After that my ↑our↓ plans are not made. With regret I decided not to go to Bulgaria. I feared that if clippings such as have appeared from time to time should be played up there it might cause then malicious & fraudulent misrepresentations might cause inconvenience to our friends. It may have been unnecessary discretion but I did not dare risk this.

The I think I have more disposable vigor than I have had for a long time. I still have to save myself more than I wish I did but I am well.

Dear J. A., I do hope you can now say the same.

Always lovingly yours
Emily G. B.