From Jane Addams, Peace and Bread in Time of War , Chapter 1, "At the Beginning of the Great War," Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1960 (originally published by The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1922-1945), pp. 1-25.
[In 1922 Progressive social reformer and pacifist Jane Addams published this autobiographical account of her ideas and activism regarding the war.]
WHEN the news came to America of the opening hostilities which were the beginning of the European Conflict, the reaction against war, as such, was almost instantaneous throughout the country. This was most strikingly registered in the newspaper cartoons and comments which expressed astonishment that such an archaic institution should be revived in modern Europe. A procession of women led by the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison walked the streets of New York City in protest against war and the sentiment thus expressed, if not the march itself, was universally approved by the press.
Certain professors, with the full approval of their universities, set forth with clarity and sometimes with poignancy the conviction that a war would inevitably interrupt all orderly social advance and at its end the long march of civilization would have to be taken up again much nearer to the crude beginnings of human progress.
The Carnegie Endowment sent several people lecturing through the country upon the history of the Peace movement and the various instrumentalities designed to be used in a war crisis such as this. I lectured in twelve of the leading colleges, where I found the audiences of young people both large and eager. The questions which they put were often penetrating, sometimes touching or wistful, but almost never bellicose or antagonistic. Doubtless there were many students of the more belligerent type who did not attend the lectures and occasionally a professor, invariably one of the older men, rose in the audience to uphold the traditional glories of warfare. I also recall a tea under the shadow of Columbia which was divided into two spirited camps, but I think on the whole it is fair to say that in the fall of 1914 the young people in a dozen of the leading colleges of the East were eager for knowledge as to all the international devices which had been established for substituting rational negotiation for war....
It was in the early fall of 1914 that a small group of social workers held the first of a series of meetings at the Henry Street Settlement in New York, trying to formulate the reaction to war on the part of those who for many years had devoted their energies to the reduction of devastating poverty. We believed that the endeavor to nurture human life even in its most humble and least promising forms had crossed national boundaries; that those who had given years to its service had become convinced that nothing of social value can be obtained save through wide-spread public opinion and the cooperation of all civilized nations. Many members of this group meeting in the Henry Street Settlement had lived in the cosmopolitan districts of American cities. All of us, through long experience among the immigrants from many nations, were convinced that a friendly and cooperative relationship was constantly becoming more possible between all peoples. We believed that war, seeking its end through coercion, not only interrupted but fatally reversed this process of cooperating good will which, if it had a chance, would eventually include the human family itself.
The European War was already dividing our immigrant neighbors from each other. We could not imagine asking ourselves whether the parents of a child who needed help were Italians, and therefore on the side of the Allies, or Dalmatians, and therefore on the side of the Central Powers....
We revolted not only against the cruelty and barbarity of war, but even more against the reversal of human relationships which war implied. We protested against the "curbed intelligence" and the "thwarted good will," when both a free mind and unfettered kindliness are so sadly needed in human affairs. In the light of the charge made later that pacifists were indifferent to the claims of justice it is interesting to recall that we thus early emphasized the fact that a sense of justice had become the keynote to the best political and social activity in this generator, but we also believed that justice between men or between nations can be achieved only through understanding and fellowship, and that a finely tempered sense of justice, which alone is of any service in modern civilization, cannot possibly be secured in the storm and stress of war. This is not only because war inevitably arouses the more primitive antagonisms, but because the spirit of fighting burns away all those impulses, certainly towards the enemy, which foster the will to justice. We were therefore certain that if war prevailed, all social efforts would be cast into an earlier and coarser mold....
The heartening effects of these meetings were long felt by many of the social workers as they proceeded in their different ways to do what they could against the rising tide of praise for the use of war technique in the world's affairs. One type of person present at this original conference felt that he must make his protest against war even at the risk of going to jail—in fact two of the men did so testify and took the consequences; another type performed all non-combatant service open to them through the Red Cross and other agencies throughout the years of the war although privately holding to their convictions as best they might; a third, although condemning war in the abstract were convinced of the righteousness of this particular war and that it would end all wars; still others felt, after war was declared in the United States, that they must surrender all private judgment, and abide by the decision of the majority.
I venture to believe, however, that none of the social workers present at that gathering who had been long identified with the poor and the disinherited, actually accepted participation in the war without a great struggle, if only because of the reversal in the whole theory and practice of their daily living.
Several organizations were formed during the next few months, with which we became identified; Miss Wald was the first president of the Union Against Militarism, and I became chairman of what was called the Women's Peace Party. The impulse for the latter organization came from Europe when, in the early winter of 1914, the great war was discussed from the public platform in the United States by two women, well known suffragists and publicists, who nationally represented opposing sides of the conflict. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence of England first brought to American audiences a series of "War Aims" as defined by the "League of Democratic Control" in London, and Mde. Rosika Schwimmer, coming from Budapest, hoped to arouse American women to join their European sisters in a general protest against war. Occasionally they spoke from the same platform in a stirring indictment of "the common enemy of mankind." They were unwilling to leave the United States until they had organized at least a small group pledged to the advocacy of both objects; the discussion of reasonable terms of peace, and a protest against war as a method of settling international difficulties.
The Women's Peace Party itself was the outcome of a two days' convention held in Washington concluding a series of meetings in different cities addressed by Mrs. Lawrence and Madame Schwimmer. The "call" to the convention was issued by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt and myself, and on January 10, 1915, the new organization was launched at a mass meeting of 3000 people. A ringing preamble written by Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer was adopted with the following platform:
1. The immediate calling of a convention of neutral nations in the interest of early peace.
2. Limitation of armaments and the nationalization of their manufacture.
3. Organized opposition to militarism in our own country.
4. Education of youth in the ideals of peace.
5. Democratic control of foreign policies.
6. The further humanizing of governments by the extension of the suffrage to women.
7. "Concert of Nations" to supersede "Balance of Power."
8. Action towards the gradual re-organization of the world to substitute Law for War.
9. The substitution of economic pressure and of non-intercourse for rival armies and navies.
10. Removal of the economic causes of war.
11. The appointment by our government of a commission of men and women with an adequate appropriation to promote international peace.