A Place For Pacifism and Transnationalism in Feminist Theory: The Early Work of The Women's International League For Peace and Freedom

Women' History Review
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A place for pacifism and transnationalism in

feminist theory: the early work of the women's
international league for peace and freedom
Jo Vellacott
To cite this article: Jo Vellacott (1993) A place for pacifism and transnationalism in feminist theory:
the early work of the women's international league for peace and freedom, Women' History Review,
2:1, 23-56, DOI: 10.1080/09612029300200021
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612029300200021
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Womens History Review, Volume 2, Number 1, 1993 A PLACE FOR PACIFISM
A Place for Pacifism and

Transnationalism in Feminist Theory:
the early work of the
Womens International League
for Peace and Freedom[1]
JO VELLACOTT
Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT The work of pacifist and internationalist women is seen as having
been sidelined, even feared or disowned by some feminists, as irrelevant or
disempowering. It is argued here that this rejection stems from misconceptions
caused by rhetoric or by semantic confusion, both originating in patriarchal
discourse. The reality of the early work of the Womens International League
for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is described, and underlying principles are
outlined. The perceived relationship between women and peace is re-examined,
serving to break down the motherhood-and-apple- pie mythology of womens
role in peacemaking. The motivation of early WILPF leaders is shown to have
been strongly feminist and their actions consciously political; while they
supported traditional feminist causes, they also claimed for women a part in
world affairs, both as a right and because social justice and equality for women
were, in their view, unobtainable in a militaristic world.
After the First World War Maude Royden, the noted British suffragist and
spiritual leader, rested her hopes for a peaceful future on the womens
movement. Bitter wartime experience had led her away from a simplistic
view that women were innately more pacific than men. But, for her, the
basic premise of the suffrage campaign had been the assertion that moral
force, not physical, must be the foundation stone of political power, and she
believed feminists could not forever deny that war was the womens worst
enemy ... everywhere where there was militarism [the womens movement]
went back. In addition, womens previous exclusion from international
affairs meant that they have none of the traditions which make it difficult
for men to see sense.[2] She hoped that the common sense of women and
23
JO VELLACOTT
their relative freedom from the constraints and conventions of national
pride, legitimated and made articulate, could transform the fledgling League
of Nations into a viable and effective agent for lasting peace.
Could the notion that women might focus on a vision larger than the
national one be more than rhetoric? Could it be a belief with practical
implications? If so, what would they be? I shall argue that there was a group
of women who adhered to the same belief, in some cases articulating it in
similar words, and who brought something new to international affairs by
their efforts to act upon it, sustained over a number of years. I shall further
argue that their work and that of other feminist pacifists emerged directly
from a sophisticated feminist understanding, as suggested by Royden, and
that it deserves an honourable place in feminist analysis, rather than being
regarded, as it has tended to be (when not completely ignored), as a
potentially dangerous aberration. Although I shall develop a particular
historical example, examining the work and underlying principles of the
early years of the international section of the Womens International League
for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), other examples may be found some from
the late twentieth century to validate and enrich the concept.
Much has been written in the past two decades about womens role in
war, and the effect of war upon them as participants or victims. The First
(and to a lesser extent, the Second) World War has been a particularly rich
field of study in relation to womens experience and perceptions of women,
in both literature and reality. The conflicts of the mid- and late twentieth
century have seen much feminist peace activism, and, partly as a
consequence, a rather smaller body of writing has focussed on the women
who have opposed war. But somehow most of this latter writing has been, or
has been seen as being, off to one side, not quite part of the main
development of feminist history or theory.
Some feminists fear that any form of womens pacifism may be
positively subversive of feminist purpose. Ann Snitow, for example, admits to
having felt uneasy about the new wave of women-only peace groups of the
early 1980s, because, in effect, she saw their actions as counter to her
theoretical position. She elaborates usefully on the numerous dichotomies
within feminism; however, her argument remains within the confines of the
equality/difference debate, which she describes as probably the oldest,
certainly the most all-encompassing name for the divide within feminism.
Since she sees feminist peace action as reinforcing the difference side, she
struggles almost apologetically to justify becoming part of a group she
considers to be so much at odds with her own belief in equality as the basis
of the womens movement. She is clear on the need and effectiveness of
women emerging to act against male destructiveness; her unease is that she
finds them deliberately trailing clouds of motherhood and nurturing, and
she is rightly leery of protests exclusively limited to actual mothers.[3]
24
A PLACE FOR PACIFISM
A recent article by Linda Rennie Forcey is helpful. Forcey gives a brief
but lucid account of the tension surrounding the concept of feminist
pacifism, as it manifests itself in peace studies. It may be the safer ground of
research, as against direct activist involvement, that enables her search to be
less agonized than Snitows, but the ground of the debate is the same.[4] As
she points out, feminist peace studies has had to accept being described as
essentialist, although researchers are not comfortable with this label.
Equality feminists, perceiving the damaging effect of the characterization of
women in the nineteenth century as angels of peace, have deplored the
motherhood rhetoric of women peacemakers, and have seen their activity as
disempowering.[5]
In looking for a way forward, Forcey suggests that use can be made of
the insights of post-structuralism. Here she is following the groundbreaking
work of Joan Wallach Scott, who believes that we have fallen into the
endless debate between equality and difference because a binary opposition
has been created to offer a choice to feminists, of either endorsing equality
or its presumed antithesis difference. In fact, she continues, the
antithesis itself hides the interdependence of the two terms, for equality is
not the elimination of difference, and difference does not preclude
equality.[6]
In other words, equality and difference are not opposites, and just
because we have spent so long in the trap, I believe this cannot be said too
strongly nor repeated too often. Forcey accordingly argues for a more
complex approach than the equality/essentialist dichotomy permits, and I
applaud her conclusion:
The challenge is to work for change, while questioning any tendency to
paint over the diversity of lived experiences for the sake of clarity and
coherence. The challenge is about moving beyond the difference-versus-
equality debate to a finely tuned appreciation of both that allows a
pragmatic tolerance for ambiguity and more than a little theoretical
untidiness.
While Forcey is writing about contemporary feminist peace studies, what she
says is doubly applicable to history, or we risk forcing women of the past
into a mold that they would scarcely recognize.[7]
Much feminist unease about women peacemakers arises from a failure
to understand their role, and it is my hope that a closer look at the work of
the early WILPF will challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions. Some
also, as we have already seen, arises from semantics: and the word peace
may be in as much need of deconstruction as was the difference/equality
dichotomy. The feminist debate bogs down in a conflation of different
meanings for the term. Disempowerment comes from the nineteenth-century
patriarchal discourse (accepted by many women) that associated
women-and-peace with the home, and built on this a whole structure of
feminine dependence and insulation from the world, separating peace and
25
JO VELLACOTT
peacemaking from any active meaning. (Applied to the actions of
statesmen, the term had and has quite a difference meaning, connoting
often, for instance, the hardnosed bargaining that concludes a war.) Female
opposition to war was no part of the feminine dependency structure; the
peaceful, passive, at-home women were to raise soldiers, encourage their
men in their patriotic duty, and keep the hearth warm for the fighters; at the
very most and even this was controversial single women might move
outside the home to bind the wounds or take jobs to free men to fight. Jane
Mackay and Pat Thane provide an apt example of the way in which the
image of women as the peaceloving sex could be turned to the service of the
war effort in their analysis of the letter by A Little Mother, published in the
Morning Post in 1916.[8]
Sandra Gilbert gives a further twist to the effect of war on women.
Recognizing the hostility expressed during and after the First World War, by
some men, to the women who remained in the comparative safety of home,
and the changed wartime position of women, she has elaborated this into a
theory of womens sexual glee resulting from their ability to rise at mens
expense during the war. This may have been true of some women, but Claire
Tylee, using largely the same material, convincingly denies the general
applicability of Gilberts argument, although she recognizes the gulf between
men and women caused by the indescribable conditions at the Front, and
also (with particular reference to Vera Brittain) gives a striking account of
the way in which some women bought into the myth of their own role of
heroic sacrifice, sometimes even after their men had been disillusioned by
the reality of the trenches.[9] Undeniably, too, women found themselves
temporarily welcome in jobs for which they would previously have been
considered unfit, and found this, in itself, a stimulating experience.[10] But,
regardless of their own occupations, probably by far the largest category of
women neither opposed the war nor urged their men on to greater sacrifice,
but rather suffered with their suffering and their own bereavements, and did
what they could to help the war effort, seeing no other way.
The use of motherhood in support of military endeavour has at most a
specious connection with women who campaigned to end war (or a specific
war), or with feminist transnationalism. Surely as feminists we can
distinguish between the women on the (probably male-designed and
certainly establishment-inspired) posters urging their sons and husbands to
go off to war, and those who stood solid against militarism. Any link that has
been made has come in part from the use by feminist pacifists of a similar
rhetoric of motherhood, owing something, doubtless, to the same Victorian
socialization, but owing something, too, to an experiential difference
between men and women, whether or not we deny an innate one. In this
connection, the argument as to what comes from nature and what from
nurture has been significant, and has had important practical effects.
However, in the late twentieth century, we are recognizing that the task of
26
distinguishing may be impossible and is less important than we thought.
Feminists of the early century made little attempt to distinguish, and
although some laid claim to more fine inborn qualities than many of us
would be comfortable with, they rejected with scorn those who would
ascribe supposed feminine weaknesses of character to them, and they did
not hesitate to appropriate those masculine strengths they thought useful.
In other words, they made a choice between those qualities they did and did
not want to claim or cultivate.
So there is a sense in which women have accepted the labels and
subverted them, nurturing, caring and making peace in ways which,
instead of ensuring their own confinement to a narrow, supportive domestic
sphere, have taken them out into the world to counter some of the more
destructive effects of mens purposes. Naomi Black identifies the social
feminist goal as the transformation of political life by womens
participation, [11] a definition that aptly fits the work of feminist
internationalists. That some feminist opponents of war claimed that their
stand was based on the special experience of women as the givers of life
should not blind us to the radical departure they were making from the
expected and approved role of women.
My study focuses on a particular group of women whose international
work was firmly grounded in a tough, logical and consistent feminism, in
which many had had years of practice. The background of the leading
British women in the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom
is instructive. With a few important exceptions, their political development
had been gained in the non-militant wing of the pre-war suffrage cause, [12]
where they had had to make choices of principle and method. Unlike the
militants they had rejected force as a tool. For some this may have been a
chance decision, for some a matter of temperament, for many it was a
carefully thought-out position. In any event, the making of a choice had
consequences. Constantly challenged on the one hand by the militants, and
on the other by anti-suffragists and lukewarm parliamentary suffragists, who
irrationally but conveniently blamed them for militant disruptions, which
they used as an excuse to defer discussion, the constitutional wing had
ample opportunity and incentive to analyse their own reasons.
Many more issues divided the militants of the Womens Social and
Political Union (WSPU) from the non-militants of the National Union of
Womens Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) than merely the question of method
or style, especially as the gap between them widened from 1910 to 1914. My
perception of the fundamental difference between the two wings is one of
the few points on which I am at odds with Sandra Holton, whose otherwise
thorough account of where the two wings differed, and of what they had in
common, does not include an analysis of the underlying principles, where
the divergence was very apparent to the more thoughtful of the leaders.[13]
Certainly both wings held the stated aim of gaining the vote, both were
27
JO VELLACOTT
grounded in strong feeling, both demanded commitment and self-sacrifice.
The WSPU provided an effective release for the passion of those women
who were free to risk imprisonment in the cause; but it provided no place
for those who wanted a share in decision-making. Emmeline and Christabel
Pankhurst inspired devotion, and played on womens emotions, but they
showed little respect for the reasoning powers of those same women, and,
curiously, no inclination to practise in their own organization the
democratic principles they professed to be so eager to see extended to
themselves in the state. By 1910, the NUWSS on the other hand showed a
high degree of consistency between aims and methods, with a closely-knit
local, regional and national organizational network, in which policy was
made by an elected body and parliamentary procedure was followed with
care. The limitations of standard parliamentary procedure were less apparent
then than now, especially to those who were shut out of the system. And it
should not be supposed that the Pankhursts offered an enlightened feminist
alternative process.
The question of the validity of physical force as an agent of power and
decision-making was ever-present to the pre-war womens suffrage
movement. A favourite anti-suffrage contention was that since women could
not take arms to defend their country they could not vote, because
government rested ultimately on force. Non-militants and Pankhurst
militants, by word and deed, presented radically different answers to this
argument. To simplify their responses, the militants appeared, by their
actions, to accept the premise that physical compulsion was the basis of
government, and to argue that to gain agreement with their demands
women just needed to show that they too could wield such force. Although
their violence was mostly against property, and no life-threatening attacks
had yet been made on people, the continuing escalation in the nature of
militancy appears to suggest that the line between attacks on property and
people was narrowing. The NUWSS meanwhile contended that the whole
concept and practice of representative institutions was to replace the basis
of physical force with one of structured consent.
Recently, the story of the International Committee of Women for
Permanent Peace, and the international conference that they convened at
the Hague in April 1915, has become more accessible, and does not need to
be retold here, [14] though it has certainly not taken its just position in
historical writing or teaching. We may still wait a while for any not
specifically feminist textbook or monograph to acknowledge the striking
resemblance and probable connection between President Wilsons Fourteen
Points of 1918 and the resolutions of the womens Hague conference, which
he had praised at the time as by far the best formulation which ... has been
put out by anybody.[15]
It is vital to recognize that the feminist initiators of the 1915 Hague
Congress were not there because they had turned aside from feminism to
28
address something that seemed to them of greater or more immediate
importance than womens rights, but because for them the issue of peace
and war was a feminist concern, a logical development of their
understanding of what a full and equal role for women would mean. Their
view, naturally, was not shared by all suffragists. In the USA Carrie
Chapman Catt, although herself a pacifist and already instrumental in
founding the Womens Peace Party in her own country, [16] initially held
back; and in Britain Millicent Garrett Fawcett saw resistance to war as
damaging to the womens suffrage cause, and was also sincerely motivated
by conventional patriotism.[17] So, although the initiators of the 1915
Hague conference were suffragists, official support from major suffrage
organizations was lacking.
The divergent responses to war marked the emergence of latent
political and philosophical disagreement within the womens movement in
Britain.[18] The split can be described as between Right and Left, or
between conservative, Liberal and Socialist, or between equity and social
feminist, or between traditional and radical approaches, and doubtless other
fault lines can be seen. There were elements of all of these dichotomies in
the division that occurred. The majority of the NUWSS national executive
had resigned by the summer of 1915, after failing to achieve sufficient
support for the Hague Conference, or for a proposed NUWSS educational
campaign which would focus on preparation for peace. The perception of
these feminists that rendering women better informed on international
organization and affairs was as legitimate a part of feminism as had been a
pre-war NUWSS educational campaign on The State and the Child [19] is
noteworthy.
Although few perceived it clearly at the time, the crux of the matter for
suffragists lay in differing views of what women should hope to accomplish
once enfranchized. Once in, would women settle in to prove that they were
not only equal to men, but in effect the same as men roughly, the
philosophy of those who threw themselves unquestioningly into support of
the war effort?[20] Or would they use the vote for the social protection of
themselves and of children, by demanding and working for a variety of much
needed reforms clearly seen to be legitimately within their sphere, such as
equality of opportunity, public health, womens working hours and
conditions, marriage and property laws? After the 1915 resignations, in line
with this view, the NUWSS did not follow the WSPU lead in actively
recruiting men for the fighting services, though they did a remarkable job of
funding and staffing active service hospitals; at the same time, they
continued carefully to monitor womens interests, trying to make sure that
wartime conditions were not made the occasion for further exploitation and
erosion of their civil rights. Or would the enfranchised claim that all issues
were womens issues, and that womens voices which might well be
different from those of men should be heard on the very questions
29
JO VELLACOTT
previously held to be no concern of womens, that is, foreign policy,
international affairs, major economic decisions and defence? In fact, the last
two programs are obviously not incompatible and could be complementary,
but they represent different priorities, and tended to be rooted in differing
political beliefs.
Almost as soon as the war was ended and the vote was won, two
conferences took place that neatly illustrate the distinction between the last
two sets of feminist belief outlined above. The women who met at the Hague
in 1915 had resolved to gather again at the time and at the place of the
peace conference that would follow the end of the war, whenever that
should be. But they had not foreseen a conference of the victorious Allies
only, at a location to which persons from the defeated nations would not be
able to travel. After a hurried exchange of telegrams, the venue was changed
to Zurich and the date set for May 1919. We shall return to consider this
meeting in more detail.
Meanwhile, other suffragists from the allied nations, mostly those who
had deplored the holding of the Hague conference, had responded to a call
from French and American suffragists who felt that the Peace Congress in
Paris was developing on lines which gave scant consideration to the special
needs and responsibilities of women.[21] An informal conference gathered
in Paris on 10-16 February 1919, and suffragists from several countries
maintained a presence there until the peace terms were made public. Those
who went from Britain included Millicent Fawcett and Ray Strachey.
Details are not needed here of their requests for representation on the
Commissions of the Peace Conference, of the readiness of some
plenipotentiaries to see them, of the verbal encouragement they received
and of the miniscule crumbs they were finally given in the way of a few
private audiences, rather than, as they had at first hoped, a full Commission
of women, set up to look at womens special concerns. They had one major
success, in contributing to an amendment to the Covenant of the League of
Nations which opened all League positions (in theory) equally to women and
men.[22] What is of interest in our context is the kind of issue they hoped to
address, which included marriage (for example, the age of marriage),
nationality laws affecting women, the guardianship of children, the
promotion of suffrage, equal opportunity in work for men and women, pay
to be for the work done, not by the sex of the worker, and equal moral
standards.[23]
The interests of the International Allied Suffragists then were focussed
on definable womens issues, and their concern with representation in the
League of Nations was seen largely as an extension of and support to the
national suffrage question. At no point did they express a wish to be heard
on questions of international power, whether military, economic or political.
Representation on all commissions was seen as less desirable than having a
special womens commission; and their function in either case was implicitly
30
defined as looking after womens interests. Ironically enough, some of the
most determined pre-war anti-suffragists would have had no quarrel with the
demands of the Inter-Allied Suffragists (IAS). Mrs Humphry Ward the
leading woman anti-suffragist in Britain had readily conceded that if it
were practically possible, there would be a great deal to be said for a
special franchise which would limit womens votes to those matters where
they were equally concerned with men, and keep them from those areas
(such as foreign and imperial affairs) where [womens] ignorance is imposed
by nature and irreparable.[24] That the limitation of womens role to
domestic issues, even when they enter the public sphere, may be congenial
to men in power is borne out by the 1979 firing of Bella Apzug as Co-Chair
of the United States special presidential National Advisory Commission for
Women because the women insisted on using that platform to talk about
war and the economy.[25]
The concept of a differentiation between roles and spheres may be
useful here. Although the Inter-Allied Suffragists were making a radical
demand for representation in international counsels, the public sphere, they
were consciously or unconsciously limiting their role to the traditional
housekeeping one.[26] My purpose (like that of the internationalists) is not
to belittle the work of these feminists, whose causes were good, and whose
self-imposed limitations may well have helped towards the acceptance of
womens presence in the public sphere, but to suggest that it should not be
regarded as the whole of feminism. Interestingly, the main debate on British
inter-war feminism has centred on two versions of this limited feminism,
concerning itself with the rival merits of those who thought womens
interests would be best served by legislation that ensured equal wages and
equal opportunity, with no special favors, and those who believed family
allowances and protective legislation would best improve womens
position.[27]
Very different was the attitude of the international as opposed to
inter-allied conference which met in Zurich in May 1919. This conference
certainly discussed the same womens issues and was in substantial
agreement with the IAS as to what was needed. The WIL (British Section of
WILPF) had sponsored a gathering in London on 28 February with the
significant title of Conference to draw up a Minimum Feminist Programme,
which had passed resolutions on all the concerns raised by the IAS, and
more. And the Zurich conference drew up a Womens Charter, which they
urged should be included in the Peace Treaty, and which contained 12 very
specific recommendations that signatories should try to implement.[28] For
leading members of WIL and WILPF, however, this represented only a small
part of the business that women should be about, and accordingly took up
only a small part of the time they spent together. When they said minimum,
it was exactly what they meant. They accepted no limit to the role women
should play in the wide public sphere they were now claiming to enter.
31
JO VELLACOTT
The Zurich women, however, did not see womens role within the
wider sphere as identical to that of men. Women, in their view, had a vital
contribution to make on all the major international questions under
discussion. The making and keeping of the peace concerned them deeply.
They believed they had two things to bring: first, a womans perspective
needed for balance, and second, a genuine international or transnational
perspective, the viewpoint of an organization emerging during the war and
encompassing women from neutral countries and from both sides of the
conflict. WILPF members had learnt, during four years of being at odds with
the mainstream activity of their nations, and being attacked for this, to feel
themselves part of a wider community, with the ties of nationality fitting less
snugly.
Rosika Schwimmer, active in WILPF from the beginning, was later to
have difficulty in gaining citizenship in the USA in part because she declared
during her court hearing: I am an uncompromising pacifist. I am an
absolute atheist. I have no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness
of belonging to the human family.[29] The vision was a not uncommon one
among members committed to the international work of WILPF, even if
Schwimmers expression of it was more extreme. An interesting sidelight,
from at least an English point of view, on why women might more easily
develop a sense of internationalism is shed by Jane Mackay and Pat Thane,
who argue convincingly that women were not included in the Englishness
of which men were so proud, because the virtues which constituted that
imperial mystique of superiority were only appropriate to men. The womanly
nurturing virtues were regarded as much less peculiarly English. Legally,
too, in most countries womens national identity was not secure, and could
be lost by marriage.[30]
One of the most significant of the important characteristics and
principles of WILPFs work which were established or simply accepted at
Zurich was this quality of something beyond what is usually associated with
internationalism, which I have chosen to call transnationalism.[31]
Although the new organization built on the international experience of
pre-war womens organizations, and benefited greatly from the contacts that
had been made through them, the approach was significantly different. The
International Council of Women (ICW), for example, was a coalition that
affirmed the work done by a multitude of womens organizations all across
the world, maintaining its own unity on particular concerns by a policy of
avoiding controversial international and national issues. The International
Womens Suffrage Association (IWSA, later International Alliance of
Women) originated as a one-issue association, again primarily addressing
womens struggles in their respective countries. But WILPF was designed as
more than a coalition of more or less autonomous national sections. The
Zurich Congress recognized the principle by establishing a permanent
international section as well as the national sections, and confirmed it by an
32
act of faith in arranging to move the international headquarters from the
Netherlands, where it had existed even during the war, to the location of the
League of Nations, which, it transpired, was to be Geneva.
The structures that were developed bore out the same transnational
principle. Although the Sections sent representatives, with voting rights, to
Congress (usually biennial), and elected members of the International
Executive, neither delegates nor Executive were expected to promote the
interests of their own respective countries. Helena Swanwick was at pains to
emphasize that British delegates, for example, represented the WIL but not
British foreign policy. Policy for the whole organization was decided upon
by Congress and the Executive.[32] The International Section addressed
international issues directly, following the policy set; its representatives did
not speak as citizens of any country but as women transnationalists,
carrying out the mandate given to them by the periodic Congresses and by
the Executive. Their gatherings were not modelled on traditional diplomatic
conferences, where representatives of each country came to present and
defend the interests of their nation.
Consistent with the determination to move beyond national interest
was a tradition in the Womens International League that first appeared at
Zurich, that if a wrong has been done, it should be the section belonging to
the country which does the wrong that should appeal for right. In
accordance with this, It was the German women who denounced the
invasion of Belgium, the deportations, and the Brest Litovsk Treaty. It was
the women from the Allied countries who denounced the blockade and the
injustices of the Peace Treaty, while women of the Central Powers did not
vote on the peace treaty terms.[33]
The transnational approach of WILPF was closely bound up with its
relationship to the League of Nations. Indeed, the League of Nations
concept was central to all WILPFs hopes from the outset, and many women
were bitterly disappointed in what they saw in the Covenant. Already, as
soon as the draft convention had been published (15 February 1919),
branches of the British WIL had been urged to meet to discuss it, and the
Executive circulated strong and specific criticisms to be considered.[34]
However, at Zurich unity was not easily found, indeed, the differences of
opinion on the League of Nations were more acute than on any other
subject. Some feared that in its present form, and attached as it was to the
treaty, the Covenant would prove worse than useless as an international
instrument, others saw it as a brave if imperfect first step to a new
internationalism. After a careful and innovative process to ensure that all
views were fully heard, a middle position expressed by a delegate as
Lenfant est né, la grande chose cest de ne pas le tuer (some had thought
the hoped-for infant stillborn) [35] was adopted, and embodied in a
number of recommendations for revisions in principle and detail to the
Covenant.
33
JO VELLACOTT
The resolution on the League of Nations forwarded to the Paris Peace
Conference has much of interest in it, and is worth quoting at some length.
The preamble declares the belief of the womens Congress
that the peaceful progress of the world can only be assured when the
common interests of humanity are recognized in the establishment of a
League of Nations, which shall represent the will of the people and
promote international co-operation. It therefore records its satisfaction
that the idea of a League of Nations, regarded as impracticable by the
majority of people at the time of the Congress of Women at the Hague in
1915, has become so widely accepted; that incorporated in the armistice
terms of November 11, 1918, it was agreed to, both by the Allied and
Associated Powers, and by Germany.
Moving into criticism, the preamble expresses the regret of the Congress
that
the Covenant ... in many respects does not accord with the Fourteen
Points laid down as the basis of the present negotiations, contains
certain provisions that will stultify its growth, and omits others which are
essential to world peace.[36]
The conditions which the Congress held that it was essential to incorporate
in the Covenant if the League were to be of any value as an instrument of
peace included the following:
membership to be open to any State desiring to join and willing to
perform the duties of membership: immediate reduction of armaments:
adherence to the principle of self determination in matters of nationality
and territorial adjustment: free access to raw materials for all nations on
equal terms and provision for easier amendment of the constitution of
the League of Nations.[37]
All of these were spelled out in the resolution. A second list enumerated
principles which the Congress was glad to find recognized in the Covenant;
these included the establishment of machinery for arbitration and
conciliation, the abolition of secret treaties, provision for the revision of
treaties, recognition of the need to reduce armaments, abrogation of certain
obligations inconsistent with the Covenant, promotion of Freedom of
Transit, and organization by the League of international resources to
combat disease and to improve health. But a strong warning was added that
these could not be put into practice unless the above essential conditions
were also included.
A third section of the resolution is something of a wish list, outlining
additional principles the Congress held would greatly strengthen the League
as an instrument of peace. Included are:
total disarmament;
34
enforcement of the decisions of the League by other means than military
pressure or food blockade;
national ratification of treaties only by an elected legislative body;
executive power of the League to be democratically elected;
universal free trade;
a plan of world economy to keep down the cost of necessities;
abolition of the protection of the investments of the capitalists of one
country in the resources of another;[38]
guarantees for the civil and political rights of minorities, including rights
of language, religion, and education;
colonized peoples [39] to be all put under League guardianship, and
mandatory powers to be required to promote the development and power
of self-government of their wards;
complete freedom of communication and travel;
abolition of child labour;
abolition of government censorship in all League nations;
the establishment of full equal suffrage, and the full equality of women
with men politically, socially and economically.
The resolution also welcomed the recognition of womens eligibility for

all League positions.[40]
The thinking of the Zurich Congress embodied in the resolution on the
League of Nations brings vividly before us the vision, tenable at the time, of
the institution of the League of Nations as the dawning of a new stage of
political development, a vision held by many people, and certainly
widespread among women. At the conference of Womens Societies to draw
up a minimum Feminist Programme, held in London on 28 February 1919
and referred to above, there had been one resolution passed that in
retrospect seems anomalous in its width of outlook (remembering that the
emphasis was on a minimum program, one which could be subscribed to by
all). A resolution on Education in International Co-operation ran as follows:
Seeing that the principle of the League of Nations has now been
recognized by the Peoples and Statesmen of the world, it becomes
essential that national systems of education shall be based upon the
principle not only of affection for the native land, but of loyalty to the
Society of Nations.[41]
While one could, as the politicians were shortly bent on demonstrating, use
the League of Nations as a forum for defending national interests, the
suggestion that something was being created perhaps a federation which
should transcend these interests and command a higher loyalty was not a
small one, and again the concept of transnationalism is useful. Along with
this went a view of a more directly democratic international body. The
Zurich Congress hope for the League of Nations was for an organization
doing its work openly, in which the peoples of the nations would have a
35
JO VELLACOTT
direct democratic influence. A number of the British women in WILPF had
developed their international views in the wartime Union for Democratic
Control (UDC), and WILPF would continue to call for a League of Nations
structure that would be responsible to the peoples, not to national rulers.
Although, as the spearhead of feminist internationalism it behoved them to
become expert on a great many subjects a challenge met by the handful of
fully engaged women with extraordinary success what they were doing was
trying to make articulate and effective what they were convinced was the
basic will to peace of women all over the world and yes, of the majority of
men as well. Marshall said it in a few words in June 1922, in connection with
the upcoming Disarmament Conference, I think it is just as important to
get the public will represented, as well as the expert knowledge in the
Disarmament Conference as it was in the Economic Conference. She added,
referring to the International Peace Bureau, which ought to have
representation in the Disarmament Conference, that:
... if this were obtained ... at least half of the representatives in the
International Peace Bureau appointments should be women, in view of
the notable part played by women in peace work in organizations, in
writings, in speaking and propaganda generally, and in personal work for
peace.[42]
But the will to peace was not to be based on sentimentality. WILPF strove
to lay the foundation for informed choice. As Helena Swanwick put it, It is
not enough to feel vaguely kind. We must get knowledge and get
understanding and we must socialise them.[43]
The proposal concerning education was further developed in a
resolution of the Zurich congress that called for WILPF to work towards
setting up an International Council for Education to promote the idea of
world organization and international ethics and citizenship.[44] WILPF
continued to regard international education as one of its mandates, and the
international office and some national sections sponsored summer schools,
public lectures and speaking tours, but the resources to develop the
ambitious concept of a Council were lacking, and the structural context for
the practice of world citizenship has, in the 1990s, yet to develop.
Since the draft Covenant of the League of Nations had been available
for several months, the thorough review of its provisions conducted at
Zurich, remarkable as it is, is no more so than the briefer commentary on
the draft peace terms, which had only been released on the day before the
Congress met. In fact, some of the most committed of the women at Zurich
were surely among the first persons ever to read the document from
beginning to end, not excepting the statesmen and officials gathered at
Paris; it had been, in the end, thrown together in a tremendous flurry and
... never properly co-ordinated. When it was rushed to the printers ... nobody
had read it in full and nobody was very sure of its contents.[45] The
resolution on the Peace Terms sent from Zurich to the statesmen at Paris is
36
shorter than the one on the Covenant only because the women could find so
little of good in the document on which to build positive suggestions. The
resolution condemns the overall departure from the Wilsonian principles on
which the acceptance of the armistice had been based, and urges the Allied
and Associated governments to accept amendments that would bring the
peace into harmony with those principles. The problems foreseen are
summarized within three comprehensive categories, and the summary
headings are sufficient to show that the significant points of the document
had been grasped. By guaranteeing the fruits of the secret treaties to the
conquerors, the terms of the treaty are seen as sanctioning secret
diplomacy, violating the principle of self-determination, recogniz[ing] the
right of the victors to the spoils of war, and creating discords and
animosities, which can only lead to future wars. The demand for
disarmament of only the defeated countries is seen as denying justice and
reinforcing the rule of force. And by the financial and economic proposals a
hundred million people of this generation in the heart of Europe are
condemned to poverty, disease, and despair, which must result in the spread
of hatred and anarchy within each nation.[46]
Undergirding the critique of the Covenant and the treaty was the
human dimension of the gathering at Zurich. The experience of women from
both sides of the conflict meeting together brought many moving moments,
and gave the women from the victorious countries a better chance to
understand the realities of life in post-war Europe than was ever sought by
the statesmen who were meeting in Paris. The approach taken to the
continuing blockade is instructive. The Allied statesmen in Paris were
brought reports of the effects of the Blockade; the Allied women in Zurich
met on equal terms with those who were directly suffering from its effects,
and saw for themselves something of what it was doing to children when a
trainload arrived in Zurich from Vienna, a trainload of those considered well
enough (barely) to survive the journey to Switzerland, where they had been
invited to recuperate. It was reported that 1500 had been rejected as too ill
to make the journey. In addition, many delegates saw more of suffering
Europe on their way to and from Zurich, and some of those with particular
medical or social interests extended their trip for further study. The Zurich
Congress spent much time considering their response to the Blockade, as
delegates from the victorious countries tried to come to terms with the
terrible results of the war. In public sessions, the women from the Central
Powers said little of their personal experiences, but in the informal
gatherings, a great deal came out.
The resolution that was passed was uncompromising, urging the
statesmen of the Paris Peace conference to raise the Blockade, and to
develop the inter-allied organizations formed for the purposes of war into
an international organization for purposes of peace, so that the resources of
the world food, raw materials, finance, transport shall be made available
37
JO VELLACOTT
for the relief of the people of all countries from famine and pestilence. If
necessary, the use of transport should be regulated, and food rationed in all
countries so that the starving may be fed.
The resolution on the Blockade may serve as an illustration of
WILPFs approach to humanitarian issues. What is being urged is, of course,
relief on a massive scale, but the onus for carrying it out is laid squarely on
the shoulders of the one body that could implement it, and which, by taking
charge of the operation could bring about the permanent reconciliation and
union of the people.[47] From time to time, WILPF sections and individuals
supported and promoted direct relief efforts; on the back page of the short
report of the Zurich Conference, for instance, WIL urges its members to
support the Foreign Fund appeal of Friends Emergency Committee for
the work of reconciliation by providing food and medical requisites for
Central Europe.[48] A still more notable example occurred at the beginning
of 1920 when the British WIL organized a response to the news that
German babies were dying not only from shortage of milk but from a lack of
rubber teats to enable them to feed from bottles. Within a few weeks £6000
had been raised, red tape cut, and a million teats despatched. However,
WILPF leaders were adamant that this kind of operation was not its main
function; it was essentially a political organisation.[49] Delegates from the
Western Powers left Zurich determined to publicize their knowledge of
conditions and to bring what pressure they could to bear on their
governments, rather than to devote their time to raising money for relief.
They sought a political solution, not a palliative one.
There was certainly no running away from difficult issues at Zurich in
1919. Much of Eastern and Central Europe was in the throes of revolution
and there was intense discussion of the tension between non-violence and
the right to rise against an oppressive regime, as well as the good and ill
experienced by some of those present in existing revolutionary situations.
Other issues dealt with by resolutions included the right of Ireland to
self-determination, ... protection for Jews and national minorities, ... political
amnesty, ... the right of asylum, and ... Conscientious Objectors.[50]
Hindsight may find some naivety in the proposals of the Zurich
Conference. However, there is also a great deal of common sense and
prescience. Further, only a high level of background knowledge and study
could have enabled the 147 women present to accomplish so much in the
one crowded week of their meeting. The founding membership of WILPF
included a number of exceptionally able women, with language skills,
international experience, some academic background and a willingness to
apply themselves to the study of economics and international affairs. They
excluded nothing from their competence and spent the major part of their
week together in drawing up penetrating criticisms of the fundamental
economic and political clauses of the League of Nations Covenant and the
terms of the treaty. Benefiting from the presence of women from both sides,
38
their prophesies of what would be the results of a strangulating peace were
hardhitting and heartbreakingly accurate. This was no body of women
socialized to submissive gentleness, reacting with appropriate distress to the
horrors of war, and anxious to fulfil the maternal role of applying bandaids
to the wounds the boys had inflicted on each other.
As striking as the substance of their comments is that they made them
with assurance and authority, never questioning their own right to know
about such matters and to speak out. They held that their deliberations had
significance in their own right, even if they could not realistically be
confident that they would have an impact on the statesmen in Paris. Dr
Anita Augspurg said, In Paris no one will care what we decide here ... but
whether or not we will be seen by the world as an organization dedicated to
international cooperation, which all the world must work to achieve, will
indeed depend on the decisions we take here.[51]
Despite its serious perceived flaws, the League of Nations was virtually
essential to the effective functioning of WILPF as an international body in
the early post-war years. The decision taken at Zurich to move WILPFs
international headquarters to the location of the League of Nations was
quickly followed up, and within a few weeks Emily Balch was established in
Geneva as the Secretary Treasurer. The Assistant Secretary was Cor
Ramondt-Hirschmann of Holland. Jane Addams of the USA continued as
President. Vice Presidents were Helena Swanwick (Great Britain, and
President of the British WIL) and Lida Gustava Heymann (Germany), not
only all noted feminists but women of marked distinction in one field or
another, as were most members of the Executive Committee, who came from
France, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and Great Britain. By late 1919 there
were 21 national sections and approaches were being received from women
in other countries, including some outside Europe.
Meanwhile Catherine Marshall, who would later join Emily Balch in
Geneva, had begun to put into practice what rapidly became a characteristic
part of WILPF methodology to go and see for yourself. Shortly after the
Zurich Conference she went into Germany. Although she later made some of
her findings available to British WIL and to WILPF International Sections,
she went on her own initiative, almost under cover, and taking risks that she
could not have done in the name of WILPF. Despite careful preparation, she
was indeed arrested in Weimar and held for three hours, but was then
released and given a passport to make observations anywhere in Germany.
As she later reported:
She walked without a permit into the Assembly where the question of
signing the Peace Treaty was being discussed; she got a vivid impression
of the tremendous cataclysm that was hanging over the country faced by
the [ultimatum] of signing in order to get food and their prisoners
returned, and beset by the feeling that they were being asked to sign a
lie because it was simply impossible to keep the Treaty. ... She got in
39
JO VELLACOTT
touch with every party and every point of view and she was everywhere
welcomed. ... She went from a Berlin Communist flat to stay with Prince
Max of Baden [Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Germany] and
everywhere the one thing in common was the profound disillusionment
caused by the Peace Treaty.[52]
From Germany Marshall went to Switzerland for a busy few days of

conferences and thence to Paris, where the Peace Conference and Treaty
Commissions were of course still sitting.
A multitude of challenges had to be faced during these early post-war
years, and Marshall did not return to Geneva until September 1920. Women
who cared about international affairs had to care also about the direction of
politics at home and often found themselves pulled in several directions. A
great deal of Marshalls attention throughout 1920, for example, was
focussed on the British Labour Party, where she passionately worked for the
adoption of her ideals of non-violence, womens participation and social
justice ideals promoted also by WILPF.
When the International Office opened in Geneva, before the League of
Nations (and Catherine Marshall) arrived, Emily Balch at times felt herself
curiously isolated, mainly because of difficulties in getting information she
needed, in spite of being surrounded by volunteers who casually blew in
explaining that they had to come to Geneva to work in our bureau.[53] As
well as sheer pressures of time, national political interests like those
occupying Marshall also raised some policy questions for WILPF. In reply to
a letter from Emily Balch reflecting on the desirability of WILPF preserving
a non-partisan attitude, Helena Swanwick wrote in August 1919:
Yet, when it comes to practical political work, National Sections will find
themselves opposing a Government (as we must do in Great Britain) and
working to put in place another section (as we are doing!) ... this is a
matter for National Sections not for the headquarters. Most of us here
feel that there is not the least chance for a real League of Nations until
our Imperialists and Profiteers are got rid of Is that partisanship? It
would exclude members of the Imperialist and profiteering parties![54]
In these early years, Swanwicks question was less hard to deal with than it
later became; there was tacit agreement, as she seems to suggest, that
national sections might become involved in politics while the International
section dealt with issues. Andrée Jouve spelled it out in a Declaration on the
subject of the Ruhr occupation sent to the French Press in September 1923
on behalf of an international delegation appointed by the WILPF executive:
Convinced that women have a work to do in the world entirely distinct
from that of the political parties, the Womens International League for
Peace and Freedom acts outside all parties and feels itself bound by this fact
to define its position and to continually indicate its line of action.[55] But it
was a fine line and would prove increasingly hard to walk.
40
Marshall was free from internal British politics by the time the League
of Nations first Assembly met in September 1920, and for a while relatively
free of the ill-health which dogged her. She joined Balch in Geneva a week
before the Assembly opened. In preparation, she immediately requested a
copy of the official papers, and was astonished to be told that she was the
first person to ask to see the rules of procedure.[56] Evidently, not
everyone shared the womens conviction that process was important.
Emily Balch and Catherine Marshall set to work in a business-like way
to identify issues to work on, using as a basis the resolutions of the womens
Congresses and what responses they had had from statesmen and their own
membership, then applying a kind of triage. Emily Balch reported:
It was clear that some of our proposals were being advocated by such
powerful interests that any additional efforts on our part were uncalled
for, that some others had no chance of being seriously considered in any
case, but that there was a third class of questions where we might exert
an appreciable influence. These considerations determined on what
points we concentrated out efforts.[57]
Besides this practical approach and the fundamental general commitment to

transnationalism, there were certain underlying principles that can be
detected in the activities of the International Section (the WILPF). Clearly,
one was that of being prepared to be involved in every major concern. The
corollary was to refuse to be sidelined into issues that, however important in
themselves, did not touch on major international policies, or were the kind
of womens issues that statesmen often expected would occupy the time of
women, or were palliative rather than political. The Geneva office was
constantly deluged by appeals for humanitarian aid in all manner of urgent
causes. WILPFs response, well understood by Balch and Marshall, was as
far as possible to tackle the causes of such tragedies, of which war was the
greatest, rather than apply first aid after the event.[58] The example of the
response of the Zurich Congress to the Allied Blockade has already been
given. Accordingly, in addition to some direct work for Jews and for the
displaced Armenian women and children, the concerns pursued from Geneva
included such matters as the process of the League of Nations Assembly,
greater openness to view of the League of Nations committees, admission of
all nations who wished to join the League, restrictions and reductions of
Armaments, self-determination, the protection of minorities, and of course
the perpetual struggle to have the opinions of women heard.[59]
When WILPF did take part in relief efforts it was when an opportunity
presented to do so at a political level and with political effect, rather than as
a fund-raiser or the provider of direct service. In 1921 Marshall served on
the International Relief Commission convened by the Red Cross to attempt
to meet the appalling Russian famine of that year. Official representation
had at first been refused to WILPF; Marshall said they are evidently some
of them afraid we are just the kind of organization that will want to exploit
41
JO VELLACOTT
the Russian situation for political ends![60] This in itself made it important
to have the decision overturned; afterward Marshall was in turn instrumental
in gaining places on the commission for two Russian representatives, the
target country being previously unrepresented.[61] The approach taken is a
good example of the thought behind WILPFs policies and choice of issues;
Marshall was clear that WILPF should take the opportunity the situation
affords for International co-operation and evidence of good will and of desire
to heal wounds and hostilities.[62] She may not indeed have been free from
a bias towards the best potential of the new struggling regime in Russia, but
she was genuinely concerned for Relief as conciliation and she was also able
to persuade the Commission to undertake a secondary role as a purveyor of
some factual information from Russia, then as ever the subject of the wildest
rumours.
The right of women to representation on all the bodies of the League
of Nations and any set up by it, won in principle at an early stage, had
seemed like a simple issue when the Covenant was first under discussion. To
make it a reality was a very different matter and remained an active WILPF
concern. The League of Nations was in no sense a parliamentary
organization (WILPF would have rejoiced had it been), so appointments
were in almost all instances made by governments. The Mandates
Commission provides an interesting case study, although we cannot take it
at length here. The League of Nations Assembly so far recognized the need
for some special oversight to be given to the needs and position of women
in the mandated territories as to pass a unanimous resolution that the
Mandates commission would include a woman [ sic].[63] However, no
government could appoint more than one member and none was likely to
select a woman (though Aletta Jacobs name was suggested as a possible
nominee). WILPF was glad to have had the principle accepted; although
privately deploring tokenism, the women recognized that it was important to
push for at least the thin end of the wedge. What actually happened on the
Mandates Commission was also and remained important to them, and
failing the appointment of a woman they did what they could to secure good
male appointees and to keep them informed of issues.
The WILPF leaders were also well aware that what they stood for was
not necessarily what might be presented by just any women appointed to a
committee or Commission. In 1927 Marshall felt that sometimes women did
not mind what woman, standing for what policy, was on, so long as the
womans point of view (hateful phrase!) was represented.[64] At this time
she was serving on a Standing Joint Committee of Womens Organizations,
which existed to put forward names for League of Nations positions, but
which was in real danger of reducing womens voice to a single lowest
common denominator and excluding representatives from Other
(dangerous) groups. Rather, said Marshall, we must teach men that
women have just as much right to any number of different opinions as
42
men have, but that they have never seen any one of those opinions
completely, with both eyes, until they know how it looks to women as well
as to men.[65]
Attempts were made from time to time to widen the basis of support
for a feminist peace campaign by drawing in other womens organizations.
These efforts peaked with the International Womens Conference for a New
Peace, organized by WILPF, which took place at the Hague from 7-9
December 1922 and brought together (according to a WILPF report)
representatives of 111 International and national Organizations from 20
different countries, representing more than 20 million members.[66]
Although this impressive gathering passed a seemingly strongly worded
resolution condemning the treaties and demanding a new peace based on
new international agreements, more careful reading reveals little in the way
of positive suggestions for forward movement, other than a generalized
commitment to work towards the convening of a World Congress for the
purpose of effecting this new peace. In fact, a proposal for organized
co-operation had been brought forward and had failed because of major
differences between WILPF and some other large organizations. WILPF on
its own was generally much more specific and concrete in its proposals than
others were prepared to be. Catherine Marshall, Helena Swanwick and Aletta
Jacobs can hardly have been surprised at the lack of readiness of the large
gathering to tackle the major problems; they had attended a relatively small
conference convened by the ICW in London in the previous month and
Marshall reported that not even the seven organizations represented there
could agree on the hard questions of peace and disarmament.[67]
The conference for a New Peace nevertheless was a success as far as it
went, in indicating the width of the will for peace, and it formed a stepping
off point for a campaign. But Marshall remained leery of attempting
co-operation with other international organizations except where WIL
(British) or WILPF would have a free hand, both because of what she saw as
the conservatism of other bodies and because some the ICW for instance
were bound by their constitutions to avoid controversial and divisive issues.
In May 1923 when the ICW was planning to co-ordinate a conference,
Marshall quoted with approval a very moving and dignified little speech in
which Alice Salamons had pointed out that the constitutional restriction:
made practical and effective discussion of peace problems impossible;
and for the women of the world to come together with pomp and
advertisement, at this hour of the day, to talk many pious platitudes
about peace, avoiding all the practical issues, would not only not do any
good, but would do positive harm would be one more disillusionment
for the suffering peoples, one more triumph for the cynics.[68]
The difficulty in interesting a wider constituency of women in international

affairs can be seen as another chapter in the story of the division which had
sent the Inter-Allied Suffragists to Paris in 1919 to defend recognizable
43
JO VELLACOTT
womens interests, while WILPF held its transnational gathering in Zurich
and did its best to be heard on issues of peace and international relations.
Although there may have been a definable party political difference between
the two kinds of feminists, visible in their home countries, the issue is more
complex than that suggests. The women agreed on many, though not all,
domestic political issues. On international questions, it was not so much that
they disagreed though they may well have done so as that the feminist
pacifists and internationalists held strong opinions on issues such as treaty
revisions, the occupation of the Ruhr, the Covenant of the League of
Nations, reparations, economic recovery and so on, and claimed their right
to be heard, while the other group did not want to express any views on
these matters, seeming to see them as outside their competence. In fact, only
the general sense of desperation caused by the unilateral French occupation
of the Ruhr, with its threat to the total disintegration of a shaky peace,
could have induced even the measure of agreement reached at the Hague
Conference for a New Peace in December 1923.
If the issues to be addressed were carefully chosen, no less attention
was paid to the methods by which they were pursued, which drew
extensively on the pre-war experience of many of the leaders in the
non-militant suffrage campaign, and which were informed by a determination
to make their methods consonant with their objectives. A full description of
all the avenues of influence used which would take up too much space to
be given here would be in some ways simply an account of the activities of
a model pressure group. The thoroughness evinced is impressive for a body
with such small resources. A characteristic feature is the personal nature of
the approach. As far as possible, information on every delegate to the
Assembly was obtained from the WILPF section in his or (rarely) her
country before he/she ever arrived. Those likely to be sympathetic to the
WILPF program on any one issue were approached by letter and by
delegation and were encouraged to speak out, and if necessary provided
with supporting material.[69] League of Nations documents were received
regularly and a good small reference library was built up. Groups and
individuals were invited for discussions in the informal atmosphere of the
WILPF headquarters in Geneva, the Maison Internationale. Use was made of
the press when that seemed advisable; on certain other occasions
journalists were kept off the backs of diplomats and other resource persons.
Pre-war contacts were built on and new acquaintanceships developed; an
effort was made to build trust in advance of need. WILPF co-operated with a
large range of lobby groups on whatever part of their programs fitted in
with WILPFs own interests. A mutually supportive relationship was
established with the three women in the Assembly (not by chance all from
Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), and with Dame
Rachel Crowdy, the only senior woman in the League of Nations secretariat.
44
During the first few years, the WILPF officers were astonished at the
apparent openness with which they were met. Their objectives were well
known and must have seemed radical to many, yet their skills in conciliation
and their wisdom in seeking out those who had some reason to be glad to
co-operate with them helped them toward their goals. Their task was made
the easier by the presence in the League of Nations secretariat, and among
delegates, of a number of men with hopes for the Leagues future almost
equalling theirs; it would become clear only later that the governments that
appointed them saw the reality of international relations and power as
located elsewhere. WILPF never claimed vast successes, but was certainly
influential in some decisions. On some matters of Assembly procedure, for
instance, Emily Balch wrote: We were happy that these questions were
finally settled much as we wished, although she added with wry humour,
(See the chariot go my way said the fly sitting its roof).[70]
An anecdotal example, this time internal, of the skill WILPFs lobbyists
and negotiators had in assuming co-operation rather than expecting
confrontation is provided by a meeting, held during the WILPF Congress in
Vienna in 1927, on the topic of minorities and attended largely by women
from the various Eastern European minorities so bitterly at odds with each
other. Tension was high, but the WILPF executive had carefully prepared to
make the meeting a positive contribution to understanding. Zonia Baber, a
member of the audience, left a first-hand account describing the trepidation
she felt on going to the meeting, where there were present Poles, Huns [sic],
Jews, Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Croatians and Albanians; many were
not official delegates, and so were not necessarily familiar with the ways of
WILPF. As Baber wondered whether any political discussion among these
hostile groups was possible, Catherine Marshall appeared on the stage as
calm and serene as though she expected to preside over a meeting of Angels
where altruism was a dominant note. Her speech of explanation caused
excited nerves to relax ... . Marshall explained that the executive had edited
the resolutions that would be presented, and nothing would come before the
meeting that was not in accord with the WILPF conciliatory spirit. In spite
of this, as soon as a speaker from Hungary (identified only as Madam X)
spoke with emotion of the wrongs done to her country, shouts began among
the audience, and:
the anticipated fiery meeting was a reality. As we sat on the edge of our
seats wondering if the chairman would call the police to remove the
disturbing members as we had witnessed at political meetings on
previous occasions the composed, confident chairman arose and
assured the audience that it would approve the resolution that Madam X
would shortly present that each speaker was at liberty to speak her
views from the floor, but that no resolution would be presented that was
not in harmony with the purpose for which the meeting was called. Oil
was poured on the troubled waters. I had forgotten, in the excitement,
45
JO VELLACOTT
that this was really a womens peace meeting I now regained
consciousness of the fact.
As the meeting went on, there was attentive listening and only an occasional
ripple of dissatisfaction as women from all the different groups poured out
accounts of their own troubles, and resolutions were presented. When all
was done, Baber reported:
We left the hall with a sigh of relief, realizing that the Peace Ship had
weathered a most difficult storm the kind of storm that has wrecked
the ship of state all around the world. The globe is strewn with these
wrecks. Great was our admiration and appreciation of our pilot who had
adopted the only safe course, and steered fearlessly to the line of the
natural principal [ sic] that contrary winds produce a calm at the point of
meeting.[71]
There is a noteworthy belief here in the concept that there do not have to be
winners and losers; a solution can be found in which all will gain something.
The early WILPF leaders seldom condemned men and never ascribed
all the ills of the world to them. Royden was explicit in her
acknowledgement that women could be as militaristic as men, and that some
men worked for peace, and Marshall and Balch in Geneva worked patiently
and respectfully with men, making it clear that they had knowledge and a
point of view to share, and offering resources as well as asking support.
What they were aiming for was a better balance, where the views of women
would be heard in international counsels, and where the values traditionally
associated with women could play a part in world decision-making; where,
too, men would be encouraged to allow expression to their own compassion.
Emily Balch and Catherine Marshall consciously sought conversion rather
than confrontation in the issues they addressed at Geneva, working with
those statesmen they held capable of understanding the human factor,
meeting personally with them whenever possible, and providing them with
the kind of material needed to advance the policy WILPF hoped to see
implemented. Betty Reardon and others have developed the idea that much
evil in the world comes from the rigid sex-role socialization that has made it
inappropriate for men to be compassionate, as it had made it unfitting for
women to be powerful, and that concomitantly, the limitation of women to
the private and men to the public sphere has kept compassion out of public
and international affairs.[72] This is precisely the concept informing the
actions of the WILPF.
While compassion was desirable for its own sake, WILPF leaders
believed compassion and conciliation also provided the most realistic
approach for those seeking a lasting peace. We have seen this illustrated in
the approach to the blockade, and more generally, in the view that the use
of the new League of Nations machinery for humanitarian ends would be
the best way to ensure the League respect and support in the coming years.
46
In attempting to show the objectives for which WILPF was striving, I
have necessarily laid emphasis on the positive intent and strength of
purpose, rather than showing where the members fell short of their own
vision. But it would be inaccurate to leave the impression that everything
was rosy. Even during the early period when enthusiasm and hope ran high
and when outside pressures were not yet of a kind to make major dissension
within the organization inescapable, the difficulties with which WILPF had
to contend were great. Hering and Wenzel are developing a useful analysis
of the many theoretical and personal differences among the German
founding members, [73] and the German section was not unique in this.
Many difficulties had to be worked out at meetings of the International
Executive, and the International Section often felt itself at odds with one or
more of the national sections. Madeleine Doty, who was International
Secretary in the early 1920s, was often in despair about the climate at
meetings, and the lack of support she sometimes felt.
There were practical problems, too. The general membership was
predominantly middle class, but it was female, and women had little money
at their discretionary disposal. Women living in comfortable houses did not,
do not, necessarily have money to spend, let alone to donate. The work of
the national sections had to be supported, and funds found for the expensive
international work. Immense hope and courage (and faith) had led to the
setting up so promptly of the Geneva office and the full-time employment of
Emily Balch and one typist. This was followed shortly by the leasing of
Maison Internationale, the beautiful home high above the street that was to
be a practical and gracious venue for the work, in which hospitality played
an important part. But who was to work there and how were the workers to
be paid? Always there must be a full time Secretary Treasurer, later known
as the International Secretary. The Secretary had a great deal of
responsibility but not much money, and was expected to live in the house
and act as hostess as well. Anxiety about finance began almost immediately;
correspondence between the office and the President, Jane Addams, and the
national sections returns again and again to the current state of the kitty.
Small donations from individuals are commented on with appreciation,
larger ones from sections received with relief, there is money for the next
few months, there is barely enough to cover the next few weeks.
Professional staff was minimal and voluntary help was accepted whether
qualified or not. When, for instance, the office was full of the volunteers so
numerous in the early days, Balch felt that she could not justify contributing
to Catherine Marshalls travel expenses, despite her longing for the very
different quality of help Catherine could give; and Catherine, willing to work
unpaid, could not afford the cost of travel as well. Meanwhile the
professional office workers sometimes complained bitterly about the way
they had to waste time finding something that untrained volunteers could
do, and showing them how to do it.
47
JO VELLACOTT
Then there were the officers (the two Vice-Presidents and the
Executive), who were unpaid, but who had some entitlement, based strictly
on need and availability of funds, to reimbursement of travel expenses, a
frequent topic of correspondence with the Geneva office. A few had private
means, some (it may be supposed) had supportive husbands. Few details are
known of their difficulties in funding their own work, less still of the women
who were simply prevented from taking any active role by financial
constraint, but some revealing information remains. Two examples are of
particular interest, and exemplify some of the familiar disabilities under
which women laboured.
Catherine Marshall never had her own money until after the death of
her father, who provided her in his lifetime with a probably not ungenerous
allowance by the standards of the day, and in relation to his own means. She
used up all that allowance and all her credit with him in the course of her
travels on international business to Germany and Paris in 1919, together
with some time in Geneva and a great deal of expensive illness. After her
parents died, she remained always short of money, in part because of
generosity, and in part because of poor skills in money management.[74]
She never asked for a salary, but she frequently had to ask for money to
cover travel and expenses, and she made quite cheerful reference on one
occasion to selling a rather ugly heirloom for £15 in order to get to a
conference. Her contribution to the international work in the early years was
probably the largest of any single member other than Emily Balch (who was
employed full-time), her skills outstanding and the range of areas in which
she became expert phenomenal, and indeed the amount she did was
remarkable, yet she would surely have done even more if a little more
money had been available, and unquestionably she would have been spared
some stress. Her work was also limited, characteristically, by her obligations
towards her parents; she nursed her father night and day through the six
months of his last illness in 1922, and then took responsibility for her
mother as the health of the latter failed.[75]
My second example is Mary Sheepshanks, a tough, skilled woman with
international experience. The eldest daughter of the 13 surviving children
(four others had died in infancy) of a British clergyman, she had taken a
Cambridge degree and had then always had to earn her own living. In the
early 1920s her name was suggested for the post of WILPF International
Secretary at Maison Internationale, work for which she was well suited and
well qualified, and which she was interested in doing. Eventually, in 1927,
she was indeed appointed as International Secretary. But an earlier attempt
to bring her there had failed, because she had stood out for a living wage
and had had the indelicacy to mention the going rate for secretaries in
London and also had drawn attention to the inadequate equipment she
would be expected to work with at Maison Internationale. Even another of
Maison Internationales overworked secretarial staff gave her view that all
48
this meant was that poor Mary Sheepshanks (whom we might recognize as
playing an important feminist role) would be impossible to work with. Later,
when Sheepshanks did hold the position, she continued to stand out for
better conditions of work the secretary should not be expected to act as
hostess as well, she said, and it was better for her health and sanity if she
did not live in the Maison Internationale. Sheepshanks indeed eventually
moved out into a little flat close by. She also insisted on having the modern
addressograph that her predecessor had clamoured for in vain.[76]
There were never enough women available to do all the tasks that
needed doing. Those who had the skills, experience, interest, leisure and
resources to offer were pulled in every direction by demands for their work.
Marshall, for example, constantly undertook more than she could manage of
committee work, service on delegations, research, behind the scenes
lobbying, reporting, interviewing, letter writing and even public speaking,
which she felt she did not do well. There was also the pull of other work of
importance. Even national sections of WILPF did not always share the vision
of those working at Geneva of the centrality and urgency of the
international work.[77]
In the late 1920s and the 1930s when all the horrors the
transnationalist women had foreseen and tried to prevent were coming to
pass, unity and even to some extent good feeling in WILPF was to succumb
to the growing tension between pacifism and anti-fascism.[78] Both the
weaknesses and the strengths of WILPF structures were shown up in the
later period. But the first five years in the International Section had been
marked by a remarkably consistent combination of outspoken advocacy
together with a real practice of conciliation.
Feminists will read the story and my analysis of the early WILPF with
different eyes according to their own variety of feminist understanding, and
will decide for themselves which qualities and principles they regard as truly
feminist. For me, the work of this group of women, relatively few in number
as they were, puts a new perspective on the theory that feminism went
under in the First World War, suggesting rather that a new lively and
visionary feminist stream emerged. As for their achievements, feminists
know better than to measure success in concrete terms of stated goals
reached; the formulation of the aims, and the experience gained in working
for them, are themselves a legacy.
The history of the early years of WILPF may suggest one important
question to us: who is it that has defined the meaning of the word feminist?
Why is it seen as feminist to struggle for equality before the law, for control
of our own bodies, or for equal educational and employment opportunities,
but somehow not specifically feminist to assume the right of women to a say
in the destiny of the world? Have we in fact rejected the maximum feminist
program and been content to work for the minimum, itself unobtainable as
long as no better way to order world affairs is found?
49
JO VELLACOTT
Notes
[1] I am glad to express my appreciation for help, encouragement or financial
assistance I have received at various stages of the preparation of this work from
the following: Margaret Kamester; Eleanor Segel; Susan Shea; Margaret Atack;
Sybil Oldfield; Jill Liddington; Ursula Franklin; Blanche Wiesen Cook; Richard
Rempel; Frank Marshall; George Marshall; the Simone de Beauvoir Institute,
Concordia University; Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge; the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Canadian Institute for
International Peace and Security; and the archivists and curators of the
following collections: the Cumbria Record Office, for the Catherine Marshall
papers (hereafter CEMP); the Fawcett Library, City of London Polytechnic, for
NUWSS collection; Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC); British
Library of Economic and Political Science (BLPES) for the Womens
International League (WILBr) papers; the University of Colorado for the papers
of the international section of WILPF (Col/WILPF).
[2] M. Royden (1915) War and the womens movement, in C. Buxton et al (Eds)
Towards a Lasting Settlement (London: UDC) and Royden in London Mail, 22
April 1920, both quoted in Sybil Oldfield (1989) Women Against the Iron Fist:
alternatives to militarism, 1900-1989, pp. 57-58 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell);

Royden, in Manchester Guardian, 20 April 1915, quoted in Mary S. Florence,
Catherine Marshall & C. K. Ogden (1987) Militarism versus Feminism, ed. by
Margaret Kamester & Jo Vellacott, p. 154 (London: Virago); for Royden, see also
Sheila Fletcher (1989) Maude Royden: a life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
[3] Ann Snitow (1989) A gender diary, in Adrienne Harris & Ynestra King (Eds)
Rocking the Ship of State: toward a feminist peace politics (Boulder: Westview
Press).
[4] Linda Rennie Forcey (1991) Women as peacemakers: contested terrain for
feminist peace studies,Peace and Change, 16(4).
[5] Giving a course in a Womens Studies program on Women and Peace, I have
encountered in students a similar fear of disempowerment. The womens peace
camp at Greenham Common airbase, United Kingdom, has also been a focus for
the debate.
[6] Joan W. Scott (1988) Deconstructing equality-versus-difference: or, the uses of
post-structuralist theory for feminism,Feminist Studies, 14(1), p. 38. I have
always found the debate hard to enter into, in large part because I never saw
equality and difference as opposites. But Scotts discussion is illuminating, not
least because she makes sense of some post-structuralist terminology, and does
not use it to obscure meaning.
[7] For example, while there is a great deal of insight in the analysis put forward by
Harris & King, the imposition of a specific theoretical framework from the late
twentieth century enables King to make the startling statement that WILPF was
not originally a feminist organization (
Rocking the Ship of State, p. 296).
50
[8] Jane Mackay & Pat Thane (1986) The Englishwoman, in Robert Colls & Philip
Dodd (Eds) Englishness: politics and culture, 1880-1920, pp. 220-221 (London:
Croom Helm).
[9] Sandra Gilbert (1987) Soldiers heart: literary men, literary women, and the
Great War, in M. R. Higonnet (Ed.) Behind the Lines: gender and the two
World Wars , pp. 208-209 (New Haven: Yale University Press; originally
published inSigns, 8(3), 1983). The most complete analysis of the historical
development of, and the part played in history by, the stereotyping of male and
female roles in war is that of Jean Bethke Elshtain (1987) Women and War
(Brighton: Harvester), who also raises questions as to the validity of the

typology.
[10] See, for example, Gail Braybon & Penny Summerfield (1987) Out
of the Cage: womens experiences in two World Wars (London: Pandora);

my own experience as an air mechanic and later air engineer officer in the
WRNS (Fleet Air Arm) was typical.
[11] Naomi Black (1989) Social p. 307 (Ithaca: Cornell
Feminism,
University Press).
[12] The leading exceptions were all women who were militants but
who had left or been rejected by the WSPU because of their opposition
either to the extremes of militant action or to the autocratic rule of
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst; Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and
Barbara Ayrton-Gould were members of the United Sufragists; Sylvia
Pankhurst and Charlotte Despard headed, respectively, the East London
Federation of Suffragettes and the Womens Freedom League; Sandra
Holton (1986) Womens Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain,
1900-1918, p. 138 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Additional

support came from some who had been at best passive suffragists but were
dedicated pacifists for example, the list of British women who wanted to
go to The Hague includes a great many members of the Society of Friends
who are not known to have been pre-war suffragists (but equally are mostly
not known not to have been). I appreciate this information from Sybil
Oldfield, who is engaged in a biographical study of all the women listed as
wishing to go from Britain to The Hague conference.
[13] See Holton, Feminism and Democracy, Ch. 2 passim.
[14] Gertrude Bussey & Margaret Tims (1965) Womens International
League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1965: a record of fifty years work
(London: Allen & Unwin); Jane Addams, Emily Balch & Alice Hamilton
(1972) Women at the Hague: the international congress of women and its
result (New York: Garland); Anne Wiltsher (1985) Most Dangerous Women:
feminist peace campaigners of the Great War (London: Pandora); Lela B.

Costin (1982) Feminism, pacifism, internationalism and the 1915
International Congress of Women, Womens Studies International Forum,
5(3-5); Mercedes Randall (1964) Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch
(New York: Twayne); Vellacott (Newberry) (1977) Anti-war suffragists,
51
JO VELLACOTT
History , 62(206); Vellacott (1988) Women, peace and internationalism,
1914-1920: Finding new words and creating new methods, in Charles
Chatfield & Peter van den Dungen (Eds) Peace Movements and Political
Cultures (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press).

[15] Quoted, Bussey & Tims, p. 21.
WILPF,
[16] Grace X. Delve (1977) Women, socialists, suffragists,

intercontinental pacifist enterprise, 1914-1915, pp. 23, 26 (unpublished
paper, University of Baltimore, seen by courtesy of the author).
[17] I use the adjective conventional because a case can be made for
regarding pacifism as the highest form of patriotism. I do not like the
terminology which describes the 1914-15 struggle within the NUWSS as
between patriots and (their opposite) pacifists. For more on Fawcetts
stance, see David Rubinstein (1991) A Different World for Women: the life
of Millicent Garrett , Ch. 16 (New York, London: Harvester

Fawcett
Wheatsheaf).
[18] Holton, Feminism and Democracy, Chs 6, 7; the split will also be
fully covered in the second part of my life of Catherine Marshall.
[19] The 1913-14 campaign aimed to raise knowledge and awareness of
all aspects of the State and the Child issue by facilitating public lectures,
making appropriate readings available, and generally encouraging
discussion, without deliberately promoting any one political or legislative
program, see Marshalls notes on NUWSS Council, 28 May 1913, CEMP;
NUWSS executive, 3, 31 July 1913, Fawcett Library; Suggestions for
carrying out education campaign, n.d.; other material, 1913-14, CEMP.
[20] Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst used their influence and
oratorical skills in support for the war; it is not easy to determine where
their followers stood.
[21] M. G. Fawcett (1976) What I Remember, pp. 253-256 (London: T.
Fisher Unwin; reprint, Westport: Hyperion). Margaret Corbett Ashby says
that the Allied women gathered at the invitation of the ICW and IWSA;
Corbett Ashby (1927) Preface to D. M. Northcroft (Ed.) Women at Work in
the League of Nations (Keighley: Rydal Press).

[22] Common , 4 April 1919; Corbett Ashby, Preface to
Cause
Northcroft; Ferdinand Czernin (1964) [p. 145] (New York:

Versailles 1919,
Capricorn Books). Czernin gives a useful chart of three successive versions

of the Covenant, [pp. 140-163] (unpaginated).
[23] Common Cause, 21 February, 4 April 1919.
[24] Mary Ward (1908) Speech by Mrs Humphry (London:
Ward
Womens National Anti-Suffrage League).

[25] Snitow, Gender Diary, p. 39.
[26] For the concept of roles and spheres, as it applied in
nineteenth-century United States feminism, see Ellen Dubois (1975/6) The
radicalism of the woman suffrage movement, 3. See also
Feminist Studies,
52
Vellacott (1987) Historical reflections on votes, brooms and guns: admission
to political structures on whose terms?, 12(2).
Atlantis,
[27] See, for example, Susan Kingsley Kent (1988) The politics of
sexual difference: World War I and the demise of British feminism, Journal
of British Studies, 27(3); Brian Harrison (1987) Prudent Revolutionaries:
portraits of British feminists between the wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press);

Johanna Alberti (1989) Beyond Suffrage: feminists in war and peace,
1914-28 (London: Macmillan); Harold L. Smith (Ed.) (1990) British
Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachusetts

Press).
[28]Towards Peace and Freedom, p. 19 (London: WIL). This is an
excellent short summary in English of the proceedings at Zurich, which are
available in full (in three languages, as spoken) as Rapport du Congres
International des Femmes (Geneva: WILPF, 1919).

[29] R. Schwimmer, quoted in Gertrude Bussey & Margaret Tims, The
Womens International League for Peace and Freedom, p. 80; for a similar
theme see Elise Boulding (1977) Women in the Twentieth-century World
(New York).
[30] Mackay & Thane, The Englishwoman.
[31] For a fuller development of the concept, see Vellacott,
Transnationalism in the early WILPF, forthcoming in proceedings of the
conference on the Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective, given at the
University of Toronto, May 1991; the term is similarly used in Anne Marie
Poiss illuminating article on The crisis years, 1935-39: the American women
of the WILPF face the dilemma of fascism, aggression and American
neutrality, given at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women,
June 1987; and by Charles Chatfield (1973) For Peace and Justice: pacifism
in America, 1914-1941, pp. 36-37 (Boston: Beacon). A recent AHR Forum

involves historians in a discussion of transnationalism versus
exceptionalism as it applies to the writing of USA history, American
Historical Review, 96(4), October 1991.

[32] WIL (British), proceedings of Special Council Meeting, 10 June
1921, Chairmans Remarks [Helena Swanwick], Col/WILPF.
[33]Towards Peace and Freedom , p. 7.
[34] Irene Cooper Willis (International Secretary) to Branch secretaries
and executive committee members, 24 February 1919; H. M. Swanwick,
Draft of Criticism ..., 4 March 1919, with MS amendments in Catherine
Marshalls handwriting, Col/WILPF.
[35] Towards Peace and Freedom, p. 7; WILPF, , pp. 53-9,
Rapport
69-96; Sabine Hering & Cornelia Wenzel (1990) Women Called Out But No
One Was Listening, manuscript of rough translation prepared by Rosemarie

Schade, p. 14; I appreciate the generosity of Rosemarie Schade and Barbara
Roberts in allowing me to see this work in progress.
[36]Towards Peace and Freedom, p. 18.
53
JO VELLACOTT
[37] Ibid., p. 7.
[38] The meaning and advantage behind this item is not completely
clear, but I assume that what was meant was that resources should be made
available for the advantage of the people of the country to which they
belonged and not exploited by foreign capitalists.
[39] Regrettably referred to, in the parlance of the period, as
backward races under the tutelage of more advanced nations. The
mandate system was a new concept for dealing with the German colonies,
suggested by Jan Smuts of South Africa, see, for example, James Stokesbury
(1981) A Short History of World War I, p. 313 (New York: William Morrow),
where it is described pithily as a beautiful formula, for it allowed the
conference and the League to have the name while allowing the conquerors
to have the game.
[40] Towards Peace and Freedom, pp. 18-19. In my list of items, some
are in the original words, some have been paraphrased for clarity and
brevity.
[41] Proceedings of the Conference to draw up a Minimum Feminist
Programme, p. 4; also Resolutions as passed ... , p. 2, Col/WILPF;
resolution was introduced on behalf of the Free Church League and passed
unanimously.
[42] Marshall to Madeleine Doty, 2 June [1927], Col/WILPF.
[43] Helen Ward (1929) A Venture in Goodwill, being the Story of the
Womens International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1929, pp.
21-22 (London: WIL).
[44] Towards Peace and Freedom, p. 18; Hering & Wenzel, Women
Called Out (manuscript), pp. 28-31.
[45] Sally Marks (1976) The Illusion of Peace: International Relations
in Europe, 1918-1933, p. 10-11 (London: Macmillan). Marks gives a useful
brief account of the extraordinary problems faced by the statesmen at
Versailles; overall, she defends the treaty, summarizing her view thus: The
real difficulty was not that the Treaty was exceptionally unfair but that the
Germans thought it was, and in time persuaded others that it was, ibid., p.
16, and Ch. 1, passim.; also see, inter alia, Michael L. Dockrill & J. Douglas
Goold (1981) Peace Without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conferences,
1919-1923 (Hamden: Archon Books).
[46] For the complete text of the resolution on the Peace Terms, see
Towards Peace and Freedom, p. 18.
[47] Towards Peace and Freedom, pp. 6, 18; for the blockade, see
Marks, Illusion of Peace, p. 7; Erich Eyck (1962/3) A History of the Weimar
Republic, Vol. 1, pp. 88-9 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press); C. Paul
Vincent (1985) The Politics of Hunger: the Allied blockade of Germany,
1915-1919 (Athens: Ohio University Press).
[48] Towards Peace and Freedom.
[49] Ward, A Venture, p. 33.
54
[50] Towards Peace and Freedom, p. 7.
[51] Hering & Wenzel, Women Called Out (manuscript), p. 19; WILPF,
Rapport, p. 79.
[52] WIL British Council Minutes, 30, 31 October1919, Col/WILPF.
[53] [EB] to Marshall 5 December 1919, carbon, Col/WILPF.
[54] Swanwick to Balch, 25 August 1919 Col/WILPF.
[55] Col/WILPF.
[56] Bussey & Tims, WILPF, p. 35.
[57] E. Balch, Report on activities relating to the League of Nations.
November 1920 March 1921 (WILPF circular letter), signed copy,
Col/WILPF. Cp Adam Curle (1980) The Basis of Quaker Work on Peace
and Service (London: Quaker Peace and Service), Ch. 4, Criteria for choice
of work, pp. 10-13.
[59] WIL (British) Proceedings of Special Council Meeting, 10 June
1921, Mimeo, SCPC, p. 6.
[60] Marshall to Jane Addams, 12 August 1921 (manuscript)
Col/WILPF; see also [Marshall] to Addams, 11 August 1921, typed,
annotated in Marshalls handwriting, Col/WILPF, copy also in SCPC.
[62] Marshall to Addams 12 August 1921 (manuscript) Col/WILPF.
[63] WIL (British) Monthly News Sheet March 1921, 6, Nos 5, 3,
Col/WILPF. For the Mandates issue see also [Balch] to Swanwick, 24
January 1921, carbon Col/WILPF, and extensive material from 1926,
Col/WILPF.
[64] Marshall to Madeleine Doty, 2 June [1927], Col/WILPF.
[65] Ibid.
[66] WILPF Bulletin, October, December 1922; A New Peace: Report
of the International Conference of Women at The Hague, 7 to 9 December,
1922 [WILPF, 1922], mimeo., Col/WILPF, pamphlet, SCPC; Conference
Resolutions, [December 1922], as sent to governments, Col/WILPF.
[67] Minutes, special meeting of WILPF members attending conference
at The Hague, 10 December 1922, SCPC.
[68] Marshall to Fraulein Glucklich, 13 May 1923, SCPC, copy also in
Col/WILPF.
[69] See, for example, [Marshall] to Lord Robert Cecil, 12 November
1920, Col/WILPF. Marshall was adapting methods she had used extensively
in the pre-war non-militant suffrage movement; Cecil, as a conservative
womens suffrage supporter, was familiar with them and knew and respected
Marshall.
[70] Balch, Report on Activities Relating to the League of Nations.
November 1920 March 1921, Col/WILPF.
[71] Zonia Baber, A meeting of the Minorities during the Congress of
the WILP Wien. As seen by a member of the audience, [16 July 1921],
55
JO VELLACOTT
WIL/BLPES; Minutes, WILPF executive, 18 July 1921, SCPC. It seems that
no full report of the evenings meeting was made, D. North to Balch, 27
January 1922; and an undated note suggests that Marshall, who had not
been well, thought she had been a v. bad chairman, Col/WILPF.
[72] Betty A. Reardon (1985) (New York:
Sexism and the War System
Teachers College Press); Birgit Brock-Utne (1985) Educating for Peace
(New York: Pergamon); Jo Vellacott (1985) Hear the women: feminism and
the peace movement, in Wytze Brouwer & Terrance Carson (Eds)
Implementing Peace Education: proceedings of a conference at the
University of Alberta, July (Edmonton: International Institute for

1985
Peace Education and University of Alberta); also relevant, although not

specifically addressing militarism, is Carol Gilligan (1982) In a Different
Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Recent writing also makes the
connection between feminist ecology and anti-militarism: see, for example,
Blance Wiesen Cook (1991) Nightmares and Dreams, Womens Review of
Books , viii, 6.
[73] Hering & Wenzel, pp. 38-47.
Women Called Out,
[74] See Jo Vellacott (1993) From Liberal to Labour with Womens
Suffrage: the Story of Catherine (Montreal: McGill University

Marshall
Press) for an account of Marshalls deficiencies in money management,

remarkable in so able an organizer.
[75] A number of letters from Marshall to Madeleine Doty and Mary
Sheepshanks, 1926-7, refer, Col/WILPF; Sheepshanks to Marshall, 21, 31
May 1923, BLPES/WILBr.
[76] Sheepshanks to Marshall, 28 September 1927, carbon,
Col/WILPF.
[77] See, for example, Sheepshanks to Addams, 21 February 1927,
quoted Oldfield, p. 248.
Spinsters,
[78] For the anti-fascist/pacifist tension, 1935-39, in WILPF, USA; see

Anne-Marie Pois (1987) The crisis years, 1935-9: the American women of
WILPF face the dilemma of fascism, aggression and American neutrality,
unpublished paper, given at Berkshire Womens History Conference; and in
Europe, Linda Fabrizio (1987) The challenge accepted: the European women
of WILPF against fascism, unpublished paper, given at Berkshire Womens
History Conference; for the 1920s, see Sybil Oldfield (1984) Spinsters of
This Parish: the life and times of F. M. Mayor and Mary Sheepshanks, Ch.
13 (London: Virago); extensive material in Col/WILPF, SCPC and
BLPS/WIL refers.
56

A Place For Pacifism and Transnationalism in Feminist Theory: The Early Work of The Women's International League For Peace and Freedom

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Women' History Review

ISSN: 0961-2025 (Print) 1747-583X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwhr20

A place for pacifism and transnationalism in

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612029300200021

Published online: 20 Dec 2006.

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A Place for Pacifism and

ABSTRACT The work of pacifist and internationalist women is seen as having

been sidelined, even feared or disowned by some feminists, as irrelevant or

disempowering. It is argued here that this rejection stems from misconceptions

caused by rhetoric or by semantic confusion, both originating in patriarchal

outlined. The perceived relationship between women and peace is re-examined,

serving to break down the motherhood-and-apple- pie mythology of womens

role in peacemaking. The motivation of early WILPF leaders is shown to have

were, in their view, unobtainable in a militaristic world.

went back. In addition, womens previous exclusion from international

The challenge is to work for change, while questioning any tendency to

coherence. The challenge is about moving beyond the difference-versus-

equality debate to a finely tuned appreciation of both that allows a

pragmatic tolerance for ambiguity and more than a little theoretical

for those who wanted a share in decision-making. Emmeline and Christabel

Pankhurst inspired devotion, and played on womens emotions, but they

curiously, no inclination to practise in their own organization the

democratic principles they professed to be so eager to see extended to

high degree of consistency between aims and methods, with a closely-knit

local, regional and national organizational network, in which policy was

made by an elected body and parliamentary procedure was followed with

care. The limitations of standard parliamentary procedure were less apparent

should not be supposed that the Pankhursts offered an enlightened feminist

The question of the validity of physical force as an agent of power and

decision-making was ever-present to the pre-war womens suffrage

movement. A favourite anti-suffrage contention was that since women could

government rested ultimately on force. Non-militants and Pankhurst

militants, by word and deed, presented radically different answers to this

argument. To simplify their responses, the militants appeared, by their

government, and to argue that to gain agreement with their demands

their violence was mostly against property, and no life-threatening attacks

concept and practice of representative institutions was to replace the basis

of physical force with one of structured consent.

Recently, the story of the International Committee of Women for

Permanent Peace, and the international conference that they convened at

specifically feminist textbook or monograph to acknowledge the striking

resemblance and probable connection between President Wilsons Fourteen

put out by anybody.[15]

It is vital to recognize that the feminist initiators of the 1915 Hague

and war was a feminist concern, a logical development of their

Chapman Catt, although herself a pacifist and already instrumental in

back; and in Britain Millicent Garrett Fawcett saw resistance to war as

by conventional patriotism.[17] So, although the initiators of the 1915

Hague conference were suffragists, official support from major suffrage

organizations was lacking.

The divergent responses to war marked the emergence of latent

political and philosophical disagreement within the womens movement in

Britain.[18] The split can be described as between Right and Left, or

between conservative, Liberal and Socialist, or between equity and social

feminist, or between traditional and radical approaches, and doubtless other

had resigned by the summer of 1915, after failing to achieve sufficient

support for the Hague Conference, or for a proposed NUWSS educational

campaign which would focus on preparation for peace. The perception of

these feminists that rendering women better informed on international

serving to break down the motherhood-and-apple- pie mythology of womens

went back. In addition, womens previous exclusion from international

Pankhurst inspired devotion, and played on womens emotions, but they

decision-making was ever-present to the pre-war womens suffrage

resemblance and probable connection between President Wilsons Fourteen

put out by anybody.[15]

political and philosophical disagreement within the womens movement in

equality of opportunity, public health, womens working hours and

continued carefully to monitor womens interests, trying to make sure that

different from those of men should be heard on the very questions

The preamble declares the belief of the womens Congress

obligations inconsistent with the Covenant, promotion of Freedom of

Transit, and organization by the League of international resources to

A third section of the resolution is something of a wish list, outlining

The resolution also welcomed the recognition of womens eligibility for

the notable part played by women in peace work in organizations, in

countries so that the starving may be fed.

WILPFs approach to humanitarian issues. What is being urged is, of course,

support the Foreign Fund appeal of Friends Emergency Committee for

Central Europe.[48] A still more notable example occurred at the beginning

function; it was essentially a political organisation.[49] Delegates from the

Other issues dealt with by resolutions included the right of Ireland to

amnesty, ... the right of asylum, and ... Conscientious Objectors.[50]

our Imperialists and Profiteers are got rid of Is that partisanship? It

would exclude members of the Imperialist and profiteering parties![54]