NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE International Woman's Suffrage Alliance - 1931 INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF WOMEN SUFFRAGE AND EQUAL CITIZENSHIP INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE HON. PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER: CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT. BOARD: PRESIDENT: MARGERY I. CORBETT ASHBY, 33, UPPER RICHMOND ROAD. LONDON. S.W.15, ENGLAND 1ST Vice-President: ADELE SCHREIBER (Germany). 2nd Vice President: ROSA MANUS (Holland). Vice-Presidents: GERMAINE MALATERRE-SELLIER (France); FRANTISKA PLAMINKOVA (Czecho-Slovakia). Corresponding Secretary: EMILIE GOURD, Crêts de Pregny, Geneva, Switzlerand. Assistant Secretary: MILENA ATANATSKOVITCH (Jugoslavia). Treasurer: FRANCES M. STERLING (England). Members: HODA CHARAOUI (Egypt); SUZANNE GRINBERG-AUPOURRAIN (France); INGEBORG HANSEN (Denmark); PAULINA LUISI (Uruguay); Jan 30 1931 My dear Mrs Call At last I am feeling less like a log & can begin to use my head. As my husband remarked with a grin, flue attacks the weakest spot! Is there a tiny possibility of your visiting Europe this year? Do consider it gravely. The Cause & Cure of war will we hope bring an accession of constructive thought & enthusiasm to the new liaison committee & who could voice that & inspire the whole work as you coud? Secondly we are tremendocesly [Reue?] on world wide campaign for disarmament & we do wish our conference in Belgrade to be one [?] & many such conferences, called to suit other organizations to which we may lend strength & support. For instance I understand our biggest & most solid labour womens movement the International Womens Cooperative Guild want to organize for this. Now no one else could inspire all these different pieces of work so well as you can. As for your child the alliance we know we have the big conference in Athens in 1932 to carry feminism & pacifism to the women of the near East. After that the deluge -- perhaps -- but let us at least die gloriously. & we do want to work up enthusiasm for the alliance. Rosa will look after you so do come over in time for Belgrade. & consider other plans as they arize. If only this horrible flue hadn't kept me in bed for 12 days. I should be able to give you more news. Yours sincerely Margery Corbett Ashby COPY Mrs C.T.Gauntlett 845 Totsuka-Machi Tokyo-Fu Japan February 11th, 1931. Dear Mrs. Algeo: It was a great delight for me to have received your kind letter a few days ago. I was sorry that I did not find time enough to take a trip to your part of the country when I passed through U. S. A. last year. You were very much in my mind while there and wondered how I could get in touch with you. My time, however, was too full and my purse rather limited that I had to give up the idea of doing anything extra. Yes, I really enjoyed my trip to London and also to Washington. It served to bring me much closer to nations on the other side of broad waters. Yet I can tell you that it also increased my love for my own country. Isn't that strange? It is rather hard to remember that already a year has passed since I crossed the waters and found myself among our occidental friends. How often I dwell on the sweet memories of those happy days spent among you people and formed such fast friendship with some of you ladies! I wish I could manage to go over to Canada next summer for the W. C. T. U. Convention. We are sending at least one or two of our women for that meeting. We are just as busy as busy can be at present as we are carrying on parliamentary work for Suffrage, Prohibition and Abolition, etc. We are planning to have a great Woman's Day next Saturday, February 14, when we are expecting to have a real suffrage demonstration. Three of the main suffrage societies will take the lead and about ten of the largest women's organizations in the city are to support us. You know the Government has presented the Suffrage bill (only for Municipal votes) yesterday, and we are going to protest against it. What we want is the equal suffrage with men. I shall be presiding at that meeting and I do not relish the idea at all, but I must do my best and prepare myself with prayer. The Christian element in the movement is predominating now and we are anxious to show that what we want to have is women with Christian Principles. We have been watching your hard work about the 19th Amendment. It must be very trying for you to have your own people working against the amendment. I sincerely trust that God will help you in keeping the law untouched. Right will win in the end. Our great movement for the revision of the prohibition law for minors is being carried on with great force. There -2- were hundreds of women standing at street corners trying to get people sign the petition for it and we were surprised to see there 4,000,000 odd signatures when we started with the hope of getting 10,000 of them. That shows that people are beginning to see the need of the law. God is a living God and He will not allow evil have its day too long if His people are wide awake and do their part. I wonder if you would be willing to help us in getting ten people who will be willing to give a dollar (Y1.00) apiece for our abolition work. We are raging a fierce war for this and are trying to raise 190,000.00 yen to keep the work going. They asked me to raise Y30.00 out of this foregoing amount. I am trying to see if I cannot get my special friends in England and America to help me by giving Y1.00 apiece themselves while they get ten of their friends to do the same. I am asking this because it is not only for the liberation of Japanese women but the womenhood of the world. It is a shame and disgrace to have our sisters kept in that kind of life simply because there is a system which legalizes it. I do not want to make a public appeal for this for the reason you can well guess but am taking the liberty to ask my friends who are big hearted enough to take the whole world womenhood into their hearts. I do not think I have received the article you wrote about our work yet. I shall be happy to have it if you can kindly spare it. I am sending you a rough report of our W. C. T. U. work beside a book on "Jiyu Gakuen", one of the experimental schools for girls carried on by Mrs. Hani who is such a remarkable worman. Thank you very much for the snap shots you kindly sent me. I liked them very much. I am sorry I had not acknowledged them. With much love and all good wishes for the coming year, Very lovingly yours (Signed) C. T. Gauntlett. February 11, 1931. Mrs. Marjory Corbett Ashby, 33 Upper Richmond Road, London, S.W. 15, England. My dear Mrs. Ashby: I am so sorry that you have been visited by the flu. I note that you spell this word flue. We leave the "e" off and save a lot of time. It is the same old nuisance however it may be spelled. I think that was a long, hard attack you had to be put into bed for twelve days. Here everyone complains of the long time required to recover one's strength and health after it passes and I suppose you will have the same experience. I am afraid you are feeling castdown over the possibilities of the Alliance and the money required to keep it going. When the time comes that it can run no longer, probably we will all be ready for its dissolution. I hope that will not come for a long time. I think you have done wonders with the Alliance and I believe that the women of all the nations are very grateful to you for your service and admire you very much for your great abilities. When a lady reaches the age of seventy-two she is pretty sure to get a lot of maladies she never had before and which make her more or less timid about leaving home. I cannot walk in a very self-reliant way. While I have not yet fallen down, I am always expecting to do so. I have pains in my ankles and it is extremely difficult to get up and down. My hands and wrists are in the same predicament. I am always thinking that if I go away from home, I may have some new indications of this trouble and I do not like to venture. I would like to go to Belgrade and I would like to get into the movement for disarmament because I do think we must all move together if anything is to be achieved.. I doubt, however, the possibility of ever going to Europe again. I would especially like to go to Athens, but, at present, I am giving it no thought. Mrs. Ashby, continued. Page 2 Do not, for a moment, think that we are rich and prosperous over here. We have a large army of unemployed and an army of men and women who were foolishly caught in speculation and seem to have lost all they had. I think I remember other times as sorrowful as these, but others say we have never had such hard times as now. It is likely to become worse and the weather has not been propitious. We have had a drought covering the entire country except in a few spots where there have been floods. Everybody's mail is constantly filled with begging letters, asking for help. It happens, therefore, that there are problems here that we must solve as best we can and there are few who can squeeze out anything in addition for international work, yet I am hopeful that all the nations in the world may send some women representatives to Geneva and that we may do something. First, we must have petitions and probably each country had better write its own and print them in its own way. When we go to carry these petitions to the Commission, it might be well if we went in a procession. If we do this, we need as many women as we can get. You women in England were always so clever in thinking up ways for demonstration, I am sure you can invent the best thing that can be done. We will follow your noble example and cooperate with you. I am sorry indeed to have come to the end of my work before it was time. With my most cordial good wishes to you and yours, I am, Very sincerely. CCC:HW. Telephone: Victoria 0285 Telegrams: Vocorajto, London International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship. Alliance Internationale Pour le Suffrage et l'Action Civique et Politique des Femmes. Weltbund für Frauenstimmrecht und Staatsbürgerliche Frauenarbeit. Hon. President and Founder: Carrie Chapman Catt. Board: President: Margery I. Corbett. Ashby. 33. Upper Richmond Road. London. S.W. 15. England. 1st Vice-President: Adele Schreiber (Germany). 2nd Vice-President: Rosa Manus (Holland). Vice-Presidents: Germaine Malaterre-Sellier (France); Frantiska Plaminkova (Czecho-Slovakia). Corresponding Secretary: Emilie Gourd, Crê ts de Pregny, Geneva, Switzerland. Assistant Secretary: Milena Atanatskovitch (Jugoslavia) Treasurer: Frances M. Sterling (England). Members: Hoda Charaoui (Egypt); Suzanne Grinberg-Aupourrain (France); Ingeborg Hansen (Denmark); Pauline Luisi (Uruguay); Ruth Morgan (U.S.A.); Alison Neilans (Great Britain); Eugenie de Reuss Jancoulescu (Roumania); Bessie Rischbieth (Australia); Josephine Schain (U.S.A.); La Marquesa del Ter (Spain); Avra Theodoropoulos (Greece); Dorothee von Velsen (Germany); Ingeborg Walin (Sweden). Auxiliaries in 44 Countries Minimum Affiliation Fee, £2 Official Monthly Organ: Annual Subscription, 6s. The International Women's News (Jus Suffragii.) Headquarters: 190. Vauxhall Bridge Road. London. S.W.I. England. Headquarters Secretary: Katherine Bompas. [Twelfth Congress: Athens, April 17-23, 1932.] 16th November 1931 Dear Mrs Catt, Thank you so much for your letter, and for sending me a copy of the one you have written to Frau von Velsen. I think she will be immensely pleased to have your views with which I personally am in agreement. I myself very much regret the decision to postpone the Athens Congress, as I feel that it is really against the interests of the Alliance and that whatever the difficulties - short of course of an international break-up - one should try to carry on. The idea of trying to organise a Congress in Geneva or a town near was mentioned, but Mlle Gourd was extremely emphatic that it would be impossible to get the Swiss women to help to organise a Congress there next year. The Board therefore did not take up the idea, and though I shall show your letter to Mrs Ashby directly I have an opportunity I fear that it is too late now even to endeavour to get it considered by the Board. International meetings take such a long time to organise, and it even takes a long time to get peoples opinion. I think that the Women's International Disarmament Committee has in mind that the petitions ought, as you suggest, to be presented during the first days of the Disarmament Conference, since I take it that is about the only time one can definitely foresee that the conference will be in full session. Some of our auxiliaries have adopted the Women's International League petition, and some other forms. I think the idea is that the petitions should be presented by countries, and certainly we will not mind who gets the credit. Mrs Ashby is better, but unfortunately I have just learnt that her mother is to have a serious operation and I fear that with this anxiety even a successful issue will inevitably retard full recovery. Believe me, Yours sincerely, Katherine Bompas Telephone: Victoria 0285 Telegrams: Vocorajto, London International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship. Alliance Internationale Pour le Suffrage et l'Action Civique et Politique des Femmes. Weltbund für Frauenstimmrecht und Staatsbürgerliche Frauenarbeit. Hon. President and Founder: Carrie Chapman Catt. Board: President: Margery I. Corbett. Ashby. 33. Upper Richmond Road. London. S.W. 15. England. 1st Vice-President: Adele Schreiber (Germany). 2nd Vice-President: Rosa Manus (Holland). Vice-Presidents: Germaine Malaterre-Sellier (France); Frantiska Plaminkova (Czecho-Slovakia). Corresponding Secretary: Emilie Gourd, Crê ts de Pregny, Geneva, Switzerland. Assistant Secretary: Milena Atanatskovitch (Jugoslavia) Treasurer: Frances M. Sterling (England). Members: Hoda Charaoui (Egypt); Suzanne Grinberg-Aupourrain (France); Ingeborg Hansen (Denmark); Pauline Luisi (Uruguay); Ruth Morgan (U.S.A.); Alison Neilans (Great Britain); Eugenie de Reuss Jancoulescu (Roumania); Bessie Rischbieth (Australia); Josephine Schain (U.S.A.); La Marquesa del Ter (Spain); Avra Theodoropoulos (Greece); Dorothee von Velsen (Germany); Ingeborg Walin (Sweden). Auxiliaries in 44 Countries Minimum Affiliation Fee, £2 Official Monthly Organ: Annual Subscription, 6s. The International Women's News (Jus Suffragii.) Headquarters: 190. Vauxhall Bridge Road. London. S.W.I. England. Headquarters Secretary: Katherine Bompas. [Twelfth Congress: Athens, April 17-23, 1932.] 20th November 1931 Dear Mrs Catt, Thank you very much indeed for sending me the copy of Miss Adams' suggestion about the collaboration of women in the work of the League of Nations. It has seemed to Mrs Bigland, the Secretary of the Joint Standing Committee of Women's International Organisations, that this question falls within the competence of that Committee, and on December 3rd there is to a meeting of the Committee to discuss the matter. I shall put the suggestions made by Miss Adams before that meeting as I think that the underlying idea is a very sound one, though it is in a way at once too detailed and too vague in my view. As regards collaboration in the Disarmament Conference, that particular aspect is being dealt with by the Women's Disarmament Committee, and this more general aspect is not of course so pressing. I would just say that with regard to Miss Adams' suggestion that a woman should be attached to each delegation as a kind of representative of public opinion is one which we have already made to our Auxiliaries for them to lay before their Governments. I shall give your message to Mrs Ashby whom we all hope will be really fit to take up work again after Christmas is only her anxiety about her mother is well over. Yours very sincerely, Katehrine Bompas Headquarters Secretary Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.