↑Copy for Miss Addams↓
Dear Miss Detzer,
We continued the discussion on the Arbitration campaign at our Executive this week and I can now write to you officially as to what we decided to do. (I am sorry I have no official W.I.L. paper by me at the moment.)
We were very much interested in your letters and first of all let me make clear that we feel that any campaign for Arbitration that you carry on in the States will be of the greatest assistance to the work we are doing here. The argument that we used as to the effect of our making a special point here of a Treaty with the U.S. only applies to the moment at which we begin to press this upon our Government. We feel it would be very much more effective if it were in response to a strong agitation in the States. We need not wait for your Government to propose it to ours, but I think we need to wait until there is a fairly strong and general expression of public opinion in your country.
We have therefore drawn up the enclosed resolution, which was sent to the special Peacemakers' Pilgrimage Committee and endorsed by them. [page 2]
We did not discuss the draft Treaty which you enclosed, drawn up by Mr. Sayre, because your Committee has not yet adopted it. This particular draft would not make good propaganda here and I think we should be unwise to use it in our campaign. It would not matter if you decided that this is the best one for you to use. We cannot judge of what will be most effective with the American public, but if you were to adopt such a draft as this I think we should have to wait until your Government actually proposed it, before we discussed it here. Whatever your Government would propose that went a single step towards more inclusive obligatory Arbitration, we should urge our Government to accept. But I think our pacifist [organizations] will want to work for a model Treaty suitable for England to adopt with regard to any other country, that went rather further than this one in stopping the loop-hole for private war. Mr. Sayre's Treaty, as he explains in his covering letter, goes the whole way with regard to justiciable disputes, but for nonjusticiable does not even go so far as the Covenant of the League.
I am rather surprised that he does not suggest the possibility of a clause by which [nonjusticiable] disputes, in the case of non-settlement by the Conciliation Commission, should go to arbitration at the old permanent Hague tribunal. I should [page 3] have imagined that this would be less obnoxious to American opinion than the clause referring justiciable disputes to the new Permanent Court of International Justice. But I know there are great difficulties to be overcome before States will agree on a clause submitting every kind of [nonjusticiable] dispute to Arbitration, especially the point as to whether a [compromise] should [arrive] at first as to the subject of the dispute.
We are asking Mr. Arnold-Forster if he will draft a model Treaty that could be used between any pair of countries, and I expect you will be interested to see what he suggests for this.
I much admire the literature that you get out for your work and we often get hints from it.
I hope our Pilgrimage Committee will be able to get a campaign going. We shall be very glad to have information about the progress of yours.
Yours very sincerely,
Hilda Clark [signed]
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