WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM
October 13, 1926.
Dear Jane Addams,
Just a month ago you set sail for America and it is also a month since I have written you, but time simply flies. I was so rejoiced to get a little note from Mary Smith the other day saying that you had arrived safely and that you were better when you landed than when you set sail. I shall look forward eagerly to more news of how you are getting on.
We continued to be crowded here in the Maison up until ten days ago. Catherine Marshall and Miss Sheepshanks [stayed] on until October 3rd. We had quite a big tea for Miss Marshall the last Thursday afternoon that she was here. I think it has been most helpful having so many of our members staying with us in the house. You will be glad to know that everybody who [stayed] here went away saying nice things about the spirit and the atmosphere of the place and all of them agreeing they were coming back soon.
We particularly enjoyed having Miss Sheepshanks. I wish we had money enough so we could have her come here and work with me. I feel as though we could supplement each other in so many ways. I think she would really like to come and that it is only a question of her health that makes her hesitate. I am sure she could be persuaded to come next spring and if you decided to have her take my place, when I leave, that might be a most satisfactory agreement.
You will also be very glad to know that the small Executive Committee meeting which we had at the end of September and which Madame Duchêne attended was most satisfactory. At this meeting there was Miss Marshall, Mrs. Larsen, Mary Sheepshanks, Kathleen Courtney and Dr. Clark. We all found it so helpful that it was agreed to hold at least four small Executive meetings during the year consisting of the two Vice-Presidents and the Recording, Financial Secretary. [page 2]
Miss Marshall will write you about this. It was voted to take a hundred or more dollars from the special fund, if you were willing, to pay the traveling expenses of these three officers to the Executive Committee meeting. Personally I feel this would be wise because the more we talk together, the more we come to understand each other. For the first time, I was able to present to the Executive my plan of work for the next three months and have them consider it in detail and pass upon it. As a result, I now feel as though I could go ahead with some enthusiasm and a sense of security. To be sure most of the work we have planned is reports and regular office routine. Besides the office work and getting out "Pax," I am to do the Congress Report, the pamphlets, [illegible] articles for the Bulletin Trimestriel of the League of Nations, if possible a short outline history of the W.I.L. which can be put in pamphlet form, make a drive for international members and continue systematizing and reorganizing the office. All this will keep me busy certainly until the first of December. The little pamphlet which Mme. Ramondt began on our Constitution and Resolutions, I hope to have out by the end of this month.
Catherine Marshall wrote the Minutes of the last two small Executive meetings and has promised to send them to me shortly. She has been ill again in England and so has not been able to send me the corrected version. As soon as it comes I will send it to you and to all the Executive Committee.
As I look back on the past year, now that I have more time in which to think, I really feel that we can be encouraged over the state of affairs in the W.I.L. It seems to me that we have weathered the storm. We know the worst about each other and all our points of disagreement and we are now really reaching out towards a common program and a common understanding, not blindly, but with a full consciousness of our difficulties.
As to the Maison, we are also making progress. Dad has given us a linoleum for the second floor corridor. It is grey and black with a red figure in it and Fräulein Hattinga has lost her heart to it because it will be so easy to keep clean. In fact, she is ready to adopt it for the dining room, but has agreed that probably it would be better to wait until we get the room painted and then see how it looks.
In the meantime we are having the room over the office all done over, papered and painted, the entire cost amounting to eighteen dollars. This is the room Mrs. von Eltz is to occupy all winter and it seemed only fair to make it attractive for her. We asked [Eleanore] von Eltz what [color] her mother would like, and we are putting on a light buff paper with cream white woodwork. We have had one of the gay [colored] Austrian pictures framed to hang in that room and we are getting some gay, [orange] and blue chintz curtains so it ought to be most attractive. [page 3]
We are having an estimate now made on the dining room and hope in a week or so to get around to having that done. We have left the drawing room furniture just as you arranged it and [we] ↑all↓ like much better having the table out of the middle of the room. We are seriously thinking of renting a piano for Mrs. von Eltz plays and the young Norwegian girl, whom I have here as a companion for my father, also plays. Further, Roger continues to write that he expects to be here December 1st and he also plays, so you see we will be a gay household.
I have not yet done anything further about the rooms down stairs because the man who has them will not in any case be leaving before the first of the year but I am keeping this whole project in mind.
I hope you will like the October number of "Pax," but I confess it was written in the middle of Executive meetings and many interruptions. It was very helpful to have Miss Sheepshanks here at the time I was doing it and get her O.K. on her own article as well as her assistance in correcting the proof.
It was very wonderful having you here this summer and we were particularly glad for those last few days which you spend with us in the Maison. I know your presence here and the various speeches you made, have helped the work a great deal. I can feel how appreciative everyone is of the work the W.I.L. is doing and of the spirit which you have put into it. Please do not hesitate to write me frankly and freely about anything and everything.
With affectionate greetings to Ida Lovett, Mary Smith and all the other good friends in Hull House and much love to yourself,
Ever faithfully yours,
Madeleine Doty [signed]
P.S. I am writing Mary Smith by the same mail.
↑I have just secured here in Geneva an English woman who is an expert in short hand & typing and has taken her degree at Oxford in French. She is coming to me Monday to stay until Dec 15th. I am paying her $22 a week. Meantime Anne at her own suggestion is going to work only half the day for us for two weeks and study short hand. I am sure this is wise.↓
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