WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM
12, Rue de Vieux-Collège, Geneva, Switzerland
29 March 1926.
Dear Miss Addams,
It is just a week since I arrived in the Maison Internationale, and during this time I have been trying to see exactly what conditions were. I found Madeleine Doty looking rather tired and worn, as she has done quite unusual work in the past months, and she seemed rather overwhelmed with the amount of work and the small clerical force that she had.
As I came here to help, I felt after a day or two that the best way in which I could do so would be to pay for some extra stenographic work. I therefore gave her the money to pay a stenographer to come three days a week for her and one for myself until May 1st.
The first notice I had that I was to "have charge of the details of the Summer School" came to me in the printed statement in "Pax International." It is only fair to me to say that I should have greatly preferred helping in any other direction for several reasons. Any other way would have been a rest and refreshment of spirit. I cannot stay through the session of the School. I must return to New York about the 20th of August.
I have not been consulted about any of the arrangements of the Summer School. I hoped to be able to induce teachers from America to come to the School, but it begins too late for Americans and continues 2 weeks after they must all start for America again.
So far as I know anything about Summer Schools, only the big universities in America have 6 weeks courses. In [page 2] England ↑even↓ the big universities run schools of only 3 weeks, so that teachers may have a vacation as well as a school in the summer.
To obviate this difficulty I have suggested to Miss Doty that the courses be arranged so that the 6 weeks courses will be for those who wish to be trained to be peace workers, and that there be the ↑a↓ 3 weeks course for those who want to get the international view-point and ways toward peace; the 3 weeks course to be 2 weeks of our lectures and 1 week of Prof. Zimmern's elementary course. She thinks it would be better to have 3 short courses of 2 weeks each: 1 week at Gland and the elementary course of Prof. Zimmern for the other week.
Unless some such arrangement is made as I have outlined here, of a 2 or 3 weeks' course, the American teachers cannot take advantage of the Summer School.
I am writing not in the least in a spirit of complaint, but simply so that you can understand my position.
I was very tired when I started, and I thought of myself merely as a helper. I do not feel that I should have the responsibility of the Summer School thrust upon me without consultation. I did hope to have the opportunity to meet the lecturers ↑leaders↓ over here and get their view–point, but probably that doesn't matter. I really think that in providing extra stenographic help for the present I have given the best help that I could, and I shall continue to do all that I am able. After all it is of small moment what I do or feel. The work is the only thing that matters.
Affectionately yours,
Katherine D. Blake [signed]
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