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Thursday June 17, 1915
From The Survey: Mary Chamberlain Reports on the International Congress of Women
which met at The Hague from April 28th to May 1st. More than 1,200 delegates from European nations, the United States and Canada met and dedicated themselves to the cause of peace. The delegates included women from the both the belligerent and neutral countries.
Today and tomorrow, we will present the entire article in two parts. From today's installment, we find that Jane Addams commented on the success of the congress:
The Women at the Hague
By Mary Chamberlain
OF THE STAFF OF THE SURVEY
The four of us sat over coffee in the cafe of the Hotel Central in The Hague.
Soldiers in peaked caps, loitering with their sweethearts, passed the window; bicyclists zigzagged dangerously through the crowd; and once in a while, the last bit of Dutch picturesqueness—the wooden shoes, flaring white head-dress and gold hair-pins of a peasant woman, kept us aware that this black-coated orthodox stream of passers-by was not the ebb and flow of Broadway. Inside, the vermilion trimmings and gold braid of smart uniforms gave color to the stodgy gathering of Dutch folk, and a jolly American rag-time, though bereft of the American café dance-floor, lightened the heavy menu of fish and meats and compotes.
The International Congress of Women was over. The four of us were journalists—tired with taking notes, seeking interviews, hurrying to meetings, straining our ears to foreign languages. We were in danger of losing sight of the spirit of the congress in our zeal to "get a story" from some delegate, in our efforts to straighten out names and numbers and speeches. Now for the first time we were trying to touch this spirit and to clear our vision by an exchange of impressions.
"It was bourgeois," said the Socialist, "a gathering of sentimentalists. The real people who want the war stopped are the working people and they would have nothing to do with this congress. To me it seemed barren and cold. Why, I’ve heard a little East Side striker rouse a meeting to a pitch of enthusiasm that was never touched by those clubwomen and suffrages leaders."
“Self-control, you mean, not lack of feeling,” objected the short-story writer, felt a great swell of emotion under the reserve of those women from warring nations. Constraint was necessary or it would have burst on the meeting like a shower of shrapnel.”
"And as for the delegates from neutral countries," added the newspaper woman, "I’m sure the minds of many or those women were poisoned for the first time with the fear of war. For the first time I believe that hundreds of Dutch women in that audience realized that war would mean the flowers of Holland soaked with the blood of the recruits drilling there in front of the Dierentium where the congress met.”
From the press-table of the congress back to America, to England, to Germany, to Scandinavia, I knew criticisms had gone as diverse as these. With them had gone others less honest, less intelligent, more partisan. The newspapers of the countries from which the delegates came denounced the congress as "pro-German,” as traitorous, as hysterical, as base and silly. Some people claimed an influence for the congress far wider than it can attain for years, others decried it as futile.
Bewildered by this wrangle and confusion. I left my friends in the café and went to Jane Addams to ask her opinion of the congress. For three days Miss Addams had, as president, steered the business of the congress through a sea of resolutions, amendments and suggestions given her in French, German, English and Dutch. She was thoroughly acquainted with the hitches and obstacles that clog every international conference and had been most closely in touch with the members of the congress.
"The great achievement of this congress," said Miss Addams thoughtfully, "is to my mind the getting together of these women from all parts of Europe, when their men-folks are shooting each other from opposite trenches. When in every warring country there is such a wonderful awakening of national consciousness flowing from heart to heart, it is a supreme effort of heroism to rise to the feeling of internationalism, with out losing patriotism.”
With a rush of tenderness and sympathy I remembered some of the women who sat beside Miss Addams on the form at the congress—frail little Miss Courtney and Chrystal Macmillan, British to the fiber yet offering a hearty second to many resolutions proposed by, German delegates; Lida Gustava Heymann, whose honest straightforward ways made one smile at the insinuation of a congress packed with German spies; valiant Eugenie Hamer, who pushed through from Belgium with five companions; warm-hearted Rosika Schwimmer from Hungary; and Frau Leopoldine Kulka of Austria, with her quiet blue eyes and patient face.
Nearly everyone of those women who sat there side by side so dignified and courteous, had brothers, husbands or friends facing each other in maddened fury or even now mown down by each other’s bullets. It was a great test of courage for these women to risk the bitterness of their families, the ridicule of their friends and the censure of their governments to come to this international woman’s congress. In the midst of the war tumult which is making all Europe shake. it meant a far sweep of imagination to realize that the feelings of mothers, sisters and wives are the same in all countries and it took the finest generosity for these women to associate themselves in a discussion of means to restore international good will.
The congress that bore this fruit was planned with doubt and misgivings. When the International Alliance for Women Suffrage held its last congress at Budapest in June, 1913, it was decided to hold the next convention at Berlin in June, 1915. Meanwhile the war broke out, kindling its hatred between nations and burning away all thought of an international suffrage gathering. However, a few broadminded women still held fast to their ideals in the midst of these rough realities. Among them, the Dutch National Committee for International Interests, a subdivision of the Alliance for Women Suffrage, ventured to lift up its voice. It proposed that the congress which it was impossible to hold at Berlin should be convoked instead in the Netherlands.
The twenty-six separate countries affiliated with the international alliance were approached, but the answers received were on the whole discouraging. The idea itself met with general favor but it was considered advisable to refrain from holding official assemblies. Therefore, the only chance of success lay in separately consulting the prominent women of the different countries, both belligerent and neutral.
This consultation took place with the result that a meeting was held on February 12-13 in Amsterdam, attended by a number of British, German, Dutch and Belgian women. Here the plans for the International Congress of Women were laid, the preliminary program was drawn, invitations were sent out, committees appointed and the emphasis of the congress turned from political equality to peace.
The next difficulty in the path of the congress confronted, not the central committee at The Hague but those who desired to take part in the conference. It was one thing for these women to accept the invitation to the congress; it was another for them to reach Holland.
Of 180 British women accepting the invitation to the congress, two only arrived—Kathleen Courtney and Chrystal Macmillan, English suffragists and members of the International Committee on Resolutions, who reached The Hague a week before the congress opened. The other 178 were first pared down to 24 by the secretary for Foreign Affair, who advised the Home Ofiice to limit the issuance of passports.
Reginald McKenna, British secretary of State for Home Affairs, has explained this action by stating that his colleague in the Department for Foreign Affairs believed that so large a number of English women in a city near to the scene of war and infested with the enemy's spies would constitute a danger for the country. Therefore 24 delegates were sorted out, representing the most important organizations and seeming most prudent in giving out information. In doing this Mr. McKenna, was careful to make it understood that these delegates had received no official character.
The reason for the non-appearance of these twenty-four picked delegates is not quite so clear and must be explained as the “fortunes of war.” When a member of parliament who objected to the participation of English women in the congress, asked Mr. McKenna if any of the twenty-four had actually reached The Hague, the secretary replied: “No, indeed. You know that all communication between England and Holland was interrupted after the delegates received their passports."
But while these twenty-four women were waiting at Folkstone for any sort of boat to convey them to Holland, Miss Courtney and Miss Macmillan were making up in quality of membership what England lacked in quantity. It was the hard work and perseverance of these two women that made one almost forget the small proportion of delegates from this allied nation in the membership of the congress. One Canadian delegate, Laura Hughes of Toronto, crossed the Atlantic to represent the colonies.
The action of the British government in suspending traffic between England and Holland was also responsible for nearly cutting off the American contingent from the congress. For four days the steamship Noordam, loaded with ammunition for the Dutch government in the hold, and with forty-two peace delegates to the Dutch capital in the first cabin, lay at anchor off Diel.
The delegates sent telegrams to the American ambassador at London and the American consul at Dover; they held meetings to devise ways and means to investigate the halt; finally, they settled down to face the fact that they were as nothing compared to the transference of troops to France or the movements of 5 the British fleet. Then just as mysteriously as she had been delayed, the Noordam was ordered to proceed, and we reached Rotterdam without meeting mines or further mishaps, the very day the congress opened.
Much has been said by the press and critics of the congress of the "Germanizing" of this peace meeting. The thirty German delegates and the fifteen Austrians and Hungarians present have been Called the “Kaiser's cat's-paws,” German spies and many other names. It has been suggested that the German and Austro-Hungarian governments were only too glad to be represented at a Peace meeting; it has even been hinted that the expenses of the congress were met by German government funds. Strangely enough, the newspapers of a Country from which a large number of delegates were excluded by government this orders,—Great Britain—were loudest in proclaiming that the congress was steamrollered by the Germans!
As a matter of fact, the way of the German, Austrian and Hungarian delegates was not altogether paved with ease and cordiality. Although they finally received their passports without trouble, they were at first suspected by their governments and at all times they have been the butt of ridicule and calumny of the press and the general public. The union of German women, for example, has almost unanimously denounced the participation of German women in the congress.
All the delegates openly declared that they did not represent the sentiment of the majority of women in their father lands, but only small, radical groups. Among them are women whose names are well known to the International Suffrage Alliance and in social work.
Anita Augspurg and Lida G. Heymann of Munich, are founders of the suffrage movement in Germany; Helene Stocker and Fraulein Rotten of Berlin are, respectively, president of the League for the Protection of Mothers, and an officer of the League for the Care of Prisoners; Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary, represented the Association of Agricultural Woman Laborers, a suffrage organization of peasant women; Vilma G. Gucklich and Paula Pogany, are the president and secretary of the Hungarian Feminist Alliance; Anna Zipernowsky is a member of the Hungarian Peace Association; Leopoldine Kulka and Olga Misar came as delegates of the Austrian Women’s Union (suffrage); Bertha Frolich, as delegate of the Society of Temperance women; and Darynska Golinska came from Austrian Poland with a memorial, from the suffering Polish women demanding the rebuilding of an independent Poland as an "indispensable reservation" in a lasting peace.
Likewise Rosa Genoni of Milan, lecturer, writer, and the sole delegate from Italy, did not claim to represent the widespread feeling of her country-women. "The other women in Italy,” said Madame Genoni, “were frightened to cross Germany to Holland, for they fear in Italy that war may break out any minute. Alas! in Italy they do not think only of peace. Everybody desires it perhaps, but first of all they think of national interest. Even the peace associations in Italy are drawn into the mesh of war."
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