I am speaking this evening not primarily as an American but as President of a League which has its headquarters in Geneva and under the auspices of which this meeting is being held.
During the Congress which the League recently held in Ireland one of our French members quoted an old saying of her mother’s that “Man made the roads but women taught the children how to walk.” There is perhaps something in that saying which is pertinent to the present situation. We are meeting in the city which is the seat of that tremendous effort which mankind is making to come together in a new and better way -- the League of Nations -- and we hope that the women’s organizations, so many of whom have their headquarters in Geneva, will be able, -- if not to make the road, or rather the new machinery which is being devised to enable the people of the world to live in harmony together --nevertheless to teach people how to walk in these new ways.
It seems sometimes in the United States as though science has been applied to commercial and industrial forces to such an extent that the moral energy we possess has not been sufficient to control these forces. This is perhaps true of the world as a whole. There are also great reserves of political wisdom and knowledge which have not been translated into human needs, which do not nourish and feed life, and which have gone so much “on their own” that they threaten to crush the life they are meant to support. I believe it is for the women’s organizations to bring generous impulses into both science and politics.
Now we have the right to ask ourselves how far the interests of women are going to be modified by international relations on which the world hangs such high hopes, and that, I think, is raising important questions in many countries. In one country after another women are making a determined and intelligent effort to understand what this new duty requires of them and what the task is which they are expected to perform. And I predict -- though it is rash to predict -- that we shall see before the next five decades are over a distinct modification in the whole international situation because women have been able to register this interest.
Some 40 years ago I came to Switzerland for the first time and then and always in visiting the country since I experienced in seeing a Swiss landscape in a sense of what Plato described as "Gleams of the eternal pattern" -- of something which suddenly stood out as representing the eternal. From time to time this comes to all of us -- a sense of something basic in the processes of nature. I do not believe it is without significance that the seat of the League of Nations has been placed in Switzerland. The League will have to get over difficulties of race and language and religion and get down to basic things. I imagine that it will be easier to do this in Switzerland than in any other place. The effort being put forward here is so complicated and full of problems that it is as though mankind was trying a new thing for which nature had formed him but which he is attempting for the first time. I am sure it is for all of us to look on the effort with great admiration and with something of the tolerance and sympathy and understanding with which one learns as one gets older always to look on people who are trying to do new things and to beat out new ways...
I believe that in the addition of Germany to the League of Nations there will be another step forward -- one of those landmarks which come from time to time in the growth of the individual when he makes an effort which is not only within the range of his goodwill but which, translated into action, by the very fact of his having taken action, increases his reason and enormously enlarges his goodwill. That is why the present meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations seems of great significance and why we feel called upon to hold this meeting and rejoice over the next step forward which this wonderful League of Nations is about to take.
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