On
the outbreak of the First World War a group
of women pacifists in the United States
began talking about the need to form an organization to help bring
it to an end. On the 10th January, 1915, over 3,000 women attended
a meeting in the ballroom of the New Willard Hotel in Washington and
formed the Woman's Peace
Party. Jane Addams was
elected chairman and other women involved in the organization included
Mary
McDowell,
Florence Kelley, Alice
Hamilton, Anna
Howard Shaw, Belle
La Follette, Fanny
Garrison Villard,
Emily
Balch,
Jeanette Rankin, Lillian
Wald, Edith
Abbott,
Grace Abbott,
Crystal
Eastman, Carrie
Chapman Catt, Emily
Bach, and Sophonisba Breckinridge.
In April 1915, Arletta
Jacobs, a suffragist in Holland, invited members of the Woman's
Peace Party to an International Congress of Women in the Hague.
Jane Addams was asked to chair the meeting
and others who attended from the United States included Alice
Hamilton, Grace Abbott and Emily
Bach. Others who attended included Lida Gustava Heymann (Germany);
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Emily
Hobhouse, (England); Chrystal Macmillan
(Scotland) and Rosika Schwimmer (Hungary). Afterwards, Jacobs, Addams,
Macmillan, Schwimmer and Balch went to London, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest,
Rome, Berne and Paris to speak with members of the various governments
in Europe.
It was decided to form the Women's International
League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Emily
Bach,
who was dismissed as professor of political economy at Wellesley College
as a result of her anti-war activities, became secretary of the organization.
The WILPF continued after the war and the international headquarters
of the organization is based in Geneva. and there are branches in
around 50 different countries.
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