WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM
↑Oct 28th, 1925↓
Dear Jane Addams,
Well here I am and loving Geneva and finding [everyone] goodness itself to me. No one could be kinder or more helpful than Vilma [Glücklich] and the housekeeper and the whole staff are devoted.
But I confess that is the cheerful side and that when I go on to report on the work I find myself staggered by the size of the task and the difficulties.
The whole thing is a little bit like the garden enchanting and full of possibilities but so over grown that it is difficult to discover the path. Just in the last two days the housekeeper has had a professional gardener in and now we look a little bare and shorn but we can see new where we are going and the beauty that will come next spring. I feel that I too like the gardeners must begin with getting rid of a good deal of debris.
In the house itself if we keep on collecting old papers and magazines, there will soon be no room for the inhabitants. I have already gotten Mademoiselle Tunas to go to the library and find out just what papers and magazines are to be had and if they are to be had readily in the library or if the library will take and keep on file those we have then I am proposing to house clean of periodicals up to [within] the last six months. All our own papers and all the recent publications I will of course keep but we are now harboring in all closets magazines of the past six years for which no one ever asks.
This I just give you as an illustration and because it is fairly typical. Also to make any change such as I have suggested above requires courage for there has unfortunately grown up a tradition that what has been must be. This means that to change [anything] at all I have got to handle the matter with great care in order not to wound feelings, which will certainly be good training for me.
In the work as in the house I feel an absorption in details [without] a clear idea of what we are striving for. [page 2] As I see it the sections are like children in different stages of development, some enthusiastic, some indifferent and knowing so little about each other that there is not only no common program but even misunderstanding and dissatisfaction with each other.
The second day I was there I went to a session of one of the Committees of the League of Nations. There was an interesting discussion going on but I did not stay long. It would be nice to have your International Secretary a learned person but as I see it at present the thing most needed is to weed out the unessential from the essential and try and find two or three things on which all our sections can agree and get [everyone] taking vigorous and active part. I would like to have the official representative of each section come and spend at least one week a year with me at the Masion Internationale if the funds and work will not permit my going to them. In this way we would get a little by ↑little↓ a common point of ↑view↓ and mutual understanding. At present we not only literally but also figuratively do not talk the same language. That is why there is such disagreement over the "Object."
There are so many things to write about that I hardly know where to begin but I must not take the time now. What would help me more than [anything] else would be a young and vigorous assistant. We have here four people who are doing little jobs and getting very tiny salaries. Mademoiselle Tunas is of course invaluable for she I think knows this place as well as Noah knew the Ark. But I have been wondering if instead of the little girl who does French [typewriting] and the [bookkeeper] who comes in and the [outside] person whom we use for dictation if it would not be better to have one fairly capable all round person whom I could drive in true American Fashion.
That is the thing I should most like money for. I have not yet heard from Anna Garlin Spencer whether she will continue to raise that fifty dollars a month for me. Perhaps you would feel like sending her a little note urging her to. If I could get together twenty dollars a week, I should like to employ young [Anne] Zueblin. She speaks four languages and French perfectly. She can [typewrite] but not take [shorthand], but is willing to learn the latter. I think I could train her into a first class peace worker so that she would be invaluable to us later on and even now I could make great use of ↑her↓. I need [someone] to whom I can say "Here are 8000 Bulletins get them to America as soon as possible. Don't ask me questions just do it." That is I need [that] kind of service and to be rid of details if I am to really pull our groups together, get out a first class Bulletin and put over the Dublin Congress. Do you think perhaps the Zueblins friends might be willing to raise the money for [Anne's] salary until I have broken her in and she could get a salary anywhere.
I hate to mention money for I cannot bear to have you raising all the money you must to keep things going and yet until I can get my drive for members [underway] the money situation is bad. Prices are frightfully high. It is going to cost me as much to live in the Maison Internationale as it did in my apartment in New York. That means that I am going to be [page 3] without any extra funds which I can donate to the League. I shall not even dare take money for [traveling] out of my salary. In fact the high cost of [everything] particularly household things [makes] me wonder if Geneva is the best place to have the Maison Internationale. However we can do nothing about it at the present so there is no good talking about it.
To come to the more human end, all my housekeeping soul is roused over this house. It has such wonderful possibilities but so much needs fixing up. For instance I want Mrs Leach to come and spend a week with me here but there really isn't a room in which I think she would be happy and comfortable. The first thing I am going to tackle is the heating problem and ↑[then?]↓ every Sunday you can think of me with a pot of paint and a paint [illegible] ↑brush↓, painting the wood work which has gotten terribly shabby. I shall of course consult with the landlord about [anything] I do.
Perhaps some of the Chicago members would like to go out and buy me some chintz for sofa cushions. I can't get any here under a dollar a yard, that is at all pretty. That will give ↑you↓ an idea of how expensive things are.
I find you can send in samples ↑here↓ free of duty and a yard or a yard and a quarter of chintz or other material would come in as a sample. I should like a dozen sofa cushions at least but of course I am not expecting the Chicago group to supply all the covers. If they do feel like getting some, almost the nicest kinds of chintz for the decoration here, is the chintz that has a black [background] and then covered with gay flowers or if you get other material plain colors are nice, red, blue, green or yellow. Mrs Lovett was anxious to make some contributions so you ↑might↓ pass this suggestion along to her.
Edith Hilles ↑like an angel↓ gave me fifty dollars when I came away, to do with as I wished and Katherine Blake gave me twenty five but I [foresee] most of that will go into paint. I had hoped to do so much, but perhaps little by little we can make the ↑place↓ gayer and more of a home and less like an office. It has a nice atmosphere as it is and I am happy to report that the [housekeeper] is furnishing excellent food. They like having people board here because that helps support the house and so my father has proved a welcome guest and he seems quite happy. Brent [Allinson] has also been here the past week so the whole atmosphere has been [somewhat] American.
Next month however Lida Heymann and Anita Augspurg are coming to stay with me and that will be the German month. After that I am expecting Yella Hertzka. I have already written her and told her she must take care of our garden for us. Before I get through I want to have each one of the sections making some special contribution to the house for I think that is one of the ways of pulling us together.
As to salary of the Secretary it is paid at the beginning of the month so Vilma [Glücklich] got her salary for Oct. I think I may charge my living expenses for these days in Oct that I am here, to the League, since I have no salary, for this ↑month↓. [page 4] You see I had three months vacation ↑in the summer↓ without pay because I knew the New York group could not afford [anything] else and that left me a little hard up. But Mrs Taussig has said she would give me my fifty dollars for editorial work for Oct. because I helped get the money for the printing, even though there was no Oct. Bulletin so that will help a lot.
Well, I must stop though I should like to keep on indefinitely there is so much to say. Any way it is a grand job if it a hard one and I'll do all I can to awaken our national sections to the importance of the work.
I had two good long talks with Madam Duchêne and she too has promised to come and spend a week with me later on.
I hope to get the first Bulletin off the tenth or twelfth of November. You must not expect too much the first issue the technical difficulties with the printer and post office are colossal but we'll win yet.
Please give my love to all the dear folks and keep much for yourself,
Ever devotedly
(Madame!!!!!) Madeleine Doty [signed]
I got seven new International members on the steamer coming over but one was English. Also I got a donation of 45 dollars but that ought not to be credited to the U.S. for the donation was given on this side of the water.
I have already written to all the sections placing before them the suggestion that the subject for the next Congress should be "The Next Steps Towards Peace."
↑Please get [someone] to send me a good Webster's Dictionary. There isn't any such in the house and I'm a frightful speller. I have [typewritten] this myself.↓
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