NAWSA     Subject File     International Woman's Suffrage 
                                         Alliance

Article 4                                                                                                 Feb. 24, 1923
                                                   Czecho Slovakia
The clearest impression the traveler gets when across the frontier is that everyone in Czecho Slovakia [suites]. An appearance of normality, prosperity and contentment is evident on every side. The reason is not far away. The Czechs have realized the aspirations of several generations which have grown stronger and more assertive through the years. Before the war they were governed by the German minority and with real or imagined hardship. A bitterness of feeling I had never witnesses in any other land grew up in Bohemia. The German language was obligatory as in the schools and in all public transactions. In resentment, Czechs knowing the language well, refused to speak it. The hazards of war set up a Czecho Slovak Republic with Slovakia chopped off from Hungary and added to Bohemia. Suddenly the Czechs found themselves free and independent and have had the great good fortune to have a wonderful serene big souled man for their President- Mr. Maseryk one time university professor. He kept the Republic from swinging to the extreme left or right and has united his people in an enthusiastic determination to "make good" before the eyes of the world. All the Czechs apparently with the earnest good will are responding with their best.

             To be sure the Germans are restive for, from the supreme rulership which they enjoyed for 300 years they have become subjects under the new order. Yet they Czechs have attempted to go to the extreme in dealing with their minorities. The Germans compose 23% of their entire population yet the constitution permits them 72 members of Parliament in the total of 284. The division of territory threw 600,000 Magyars into Czecho Slovakia and these have 9 de[s]puties and 5 Senators. Before the new arrangement the 3 millions of Slovaks had only one deputy in the Hungarian Parliament. These changes are among many pointed out by the young and patriotic Minister of the Interior as indications that Republic is determined upon a policy of justice for all.




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                      The money of Czecho Slovakia is in far better condition that that of her neighbors, the reason being that the Republic set itself at the outset to solve the problem of balancing budget with income, which few other nations have been able to do. The people were called upon to contribute jewelry to increase the gold reserve, and this they did with a loyalty which only hope can inspire. Now the Republic is approaching the time when it will be able to resume the gold standard. Wages [?] good and the money received can buy. For example, a member of Parliament receives monthly a salary which converted into American dollars equals $163.00 compared with $5.60 received monthly by Hungarian, $4.50 by the German and 20 cents by the Austrian, M.P.

                  It was our pleasure to lunch with President Maseryk and his almost as famous daughter, Miss Alice Maseryk, who as president of the Red Cross has charge of the national social work. The President lives in the country but receives his official guests in the old palace which crowns the great hill overlooking the City of Prague. We waited for a few minutes in a room which spoke in every detail of the happily departed Empire. The walls were covered with handsome portraits of kings, queens and their families and the furniture richly upholstered in brocaded crimson and gold satin completed the effect. With the arrival of the President we were excorted into a similar room with walls also covered with the gayly clad portraits of royal families. In the center was the table where the simple mannered university professor presided and talked earnestly of the hopes of the Republic.

                When I ventured to say that a woman suffragist being received by the President of a Republic in this ancient palace form whose walls the royalties of the past looked down, indicated to me that a new epoch had come, a quaint smile played on his face, and he confessed that until recently he had failed to note the character of the pictures upon the walls, so overwhelmed had he been with the task of building up the new Republic, "It has been like the child learning to walk", said he, "Every step has to be watched and placed with care." The President is a great man called

a great task. He has brought unselfishness, idealism, a great fund of knowledge, 
and a capacity for hard work as his equipment. That he is beloved by his people is 
everywhere apparent. 
Voting is universal for men and women and is compulsory. That is an experiment 
worth watching. I had asked Mme. Plamankova, who from a promising girl as she was when 
I first met her, has developed into a great and wonderful woman, to get me opportunities 
to interview the chiefs of the principal political parties. If there was a reaction 
against feminism in Central Europe, I was curious to discover whether it affected
Czecho Slovakia. In other countries the unusual public services of women belonged to
the war period and gratitude was rapidly fading away, but in this new Republic women
are still helping to construct and to move forward and I expected to find gratitude still
in operation. The task I had set myself was larger than I planned, for the political 
parties are numerous. All the chairmen were in agreement, with one exception; there is
no reaction against woman suffrage in Czecho Slovakia, and in most particulars every
one is satisfied with it. Usually women undertake party work very seriously and have
been of invaluable assistance. They have brought great zeal for social progress and
have contributed much initiative to the program. They have managed political party
classes and schools to acquaint the public with party aims. Several of the parties 
have conducted schools for teaching public speaking and women have largely managed
them. One party chairman reported that the attendance upon these schools of his party
had been above 3000 persons. Men like to hear women speak as they bring new faith and
enthusiasm and are considered livlier contribution to a political program than men.
The only national chairmen of a party who seemed to doubt was that of the
Agrarian party. He thought peasant women were not as loyal to the peasant party as
they should be and the Clerical party had better success in enrolling them.
The Parliament has fourteen women members, strong able women and several are
effective speakers. Mme. Planankova is a member of the City Council of Prague.

Miss Jumova who has usually been a delegate to international suffrage congresses
was engaged in organizing the school system throughout the country. The auxiliary
of the Alliance Vybor pre volebin pravo zen is alive and alert and fully aware
that its work is not at an end. It gave us a tea attended by the Mayor, some of
the Cabinet and most of the women M. P's. The hall was crowded and everyone
looked so content, normal and happy that it was a comfort to realize that the economic
desert of Central Europe has an oasis with its centre at Prague.
Yet in the midst of this constructive forward moving young Republic there
is a problem which illustrates the difficulties in the way of early and contented
peace. Slovakia is intensely Catholic - indeed it is what in Europe is called
"black Catholic", although I do not pretend to understand the exact meaning of that 
expression. When it was a part of Hungary there were 300 schools in the territory
and in all, the Hungarian language (quite unrelated to any other in Europe) was
obligatory. The Catholic religion however was established in these schools. Now
the territory has been attached to Czecho Slovakia and 3000 schools have been established
where the Czechish language only is obligatory - a great relief from the
usual oppression of the [overload] overlord, the insistence of the use of his language. But
there is a snag. The new schools are public [and] on much the same system as ours and
therefore they neither espouse nor condemn any religion. The gain in liberty to the 
Slovaks judged by the American standard has been about 1000%, but many of the Slovaks
are so creed bound as to regard the official removal of the Catholic faith from the
schools as a grievance and therefore to greatly undervalue the increase in the number
of schools and the release from the obligation to learn a foreign language. That they
really feel and resent the change is evident from the fact that the Slovak Catholics
have withdrawn from the national Clerical party which is charged by them with
connivance at the imposition of what they choose to regard a grievance. Thus, a
people too narrowly bound to their creed to understand progress are literally pulling
backward against the normal constructive trend of things. The dissatisfaction fans

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the hopes of Hungary that Slovakia will return to it of its own volition some day 
and constitutes a problem for the young Czech Republic which ruffles the smooth 
path of her forward march.
Nevertheless in the midst of much troubled peoples and much disturbed 
nations, Czecho Slovakia stands forth like a star in the wilderness leading on. 
She will make good. There is neither danger from the red terror of the radical 
communists, nor the white terror of the overwrought conservatives. A [proper]
people with an art, an architecture, a music, a literature, and even a 
gymnastic training all their own, has come to its rightful place in the world, 
what the minorities make of themselves under the new order it is yet too early 
to judge. For a thousand years tribes, nationalities, races, have been 
imposing themselves upon conquered territories in all Europe, and territories 
have been transferred from owner to owner by the chances of war. Peoples are 
intermixed and overlapped and he who can find the secret of restoring them all 
to self respect, tolerance of each other and normal contented life will be a 
superman or a god. Yet through the pangs of these present day trials these 
peoples will assuredly march to a happier destiny, though the way be long and the 
path thorny. Czech women are loyal feminists and Mme. Planankova is a great 
leader. Should there be reaction against women suffrage which some think is threatened in 
the unhappy countries, it will prove a center of light to lead them back. 
Altho I regret the pain which other nationalities have suffered in the setting 
up of the Czecho Slovak Republic I am glad that it was done and I firmly believe 
in the wisdom of those people and their determination to be just.

Article 5                                            Germany                                 Jan. 27, 1928
Throughout Central Europe, outside of Germany, one explanation only of the depreciated money is given by the average citizen; France pressing Germany for reparations she could not pay has caused the fall of the mark, and the monetary systems of the neighboring countries being dependent upon the mark of their standard have been unequal to the strain, and consequently crowns, Hungarian and Austrian, and even Italian lire, have crashed under the blow. In Germany itself however, I found this cause listed in the average mind as one of many factors and a general recognition that there had been bad management of the money problem by the Government. 

The question of reparations is uppermost in every mind and divides itself into two main worries, first the fear that the Allies, especially France, mean to demand reparations impossible to pay with valueless money to the point of absolute ruin for Germany, and second a lack of confidence that any Government will be able to cope with so desperate a situation when and if it comes. The general public impose great faith in President Ebert who has kept the nation going under almost overpowering odds. Despite the fact that Germany had been long trained to recognize aristocracy and special education as necessary qualifications for all governors, Ebert, the saddle has won and holds the grateful approval and complete confidence of many classes, quite apart from the "workers". Yet presidents change and a sudden turn in the trend of things many precipitate a communist uprising or a monarchical coup, or first one and then the other. These two great black dreads are in the back of the mind of every German intellectual. Very many believe the reports long current that Russians envoys are not only plentiful in Germany but that they are making conversions which in a crisis may prove a serious menace to the orderliness of affairs which has thus far been maintained.

we had the privilege of taking tea with President and Mrs. Ebert. The President is unmistakably of the workingman's type, but so frank and sincere that one feels at one the fundamental greatness of the man.            A grim earnest 


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determination to lead Germany through her troubles to a place among the nations in manifest in every word and gesture. 

The correspondents found much cause for amusement with Frau Ebert was promoted to first lady of the land. They described her in and without Germany as fat and frumpy, whose normal place was to serve sourkraut to the saddler. Instead Frau Ebert is tall, slender and of good figure. She was neatly dressed and in general good looks could take a prixe over at least 95% of the women of any country. It is said that she was once a servant. Perhaps it was is that capacity that she took unconscious training in the art of being a hostess. No duchess ever possessed more poise and quiet dignity than she. Her instincts are those of a lady and her bearing is in all particulars appropriate to her new sphere. Frau Ebert was a surprise and a satisfaction - and I should judge a helpful comrade to a badly harassed president.

Here as throughout Europe the pressing problem for all the masses is food for the family. While all incomes have risen in the total number of marks paid, yet the rise has borne little relation to the increase in prices. Farmers and unskilled labor have received the highest proportional benefit, and brain workers have suffered most. These classes do not have accumulated funds and little _______ from year to year in clothing or household equipment. After the war when __________ there was a hesitation to replace the departed china and glass and table and bed linen, came the financial crash and replacement became impossible. The wife of a university professor said: "You cannot imagine what it is to keep house at present. Although salaries are increased, the difference between their buying power and the needs of life is getting daily greater, Eggs are at present 200 times, milk 250 times, dearer than before the war. Bread is still sold at the rate of 100 times the peace price, but that is owing to conventions which force the big farmers to sell a percentage of their grain at reduced prices for bread. Coal is almost impossible to get and the little obtainable is purchased at an exorbitant price. The housekeeper decides to out butter and coffee from her menu, and to serve meatless dinners, but when she

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turns to find substitutes for these one time necessities, she faces prices almost as prohibitive. The clothing question is even more impossible of solution. To have new soles and heels put on a pair of shoes costs more than fifty pairs of first class shoes before the war. To have a winter coat dyed costs as much as five first class pre war tailored costumes. Fortunately during the day time one is so busy that one does not always think of the future and its threats, but at night it is sometimes as if one felt bodily an iron hand squeezing one's heart - the uncertainty the darkness on the one hand and the utter helplessness and forced passivity on the other, makes it all well nigh unbearable.

I purchased some parcels of food for gifts to old friends and found food exceedingly cheap when purchased with the value of American dollars, yet the marks paid for each parcel was the equivalent of a month's salaries for thousands of German brain workers. No housekeeper can make a budget for the prices go up and the marks come down. It is certainly the most desperately exasperating situation any housewife ever faced.

A friend had held a government post, but was obliged to give it up in order to join her husband and family who had been transferred to another city. Knowing that her salary would soon end, she decided to lay aside a few marks each month for Christmas presents. She should have bought the presents at the time, for the marks went down and said she "with all I had saved I could not now do more than buy two pocket handkerchiefs".

While in Berlin the street car fare was doubled and already the car fares paid by workers going to and from their employment was a heavy burden. Few can afford to go out in the evening because it means a train fare and this condition prevails throughout Central Europe. Variety is the only thing that makes life worth living and the capacity for variety is entirely eliminated from millions of households.


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Many are the cruel results of war but none to my mind compare with the crushing of the intellectual growth of nations. Throughout Europe brain workers are barely able to live and there is no money with which to educate the young aspirants for intellectual employments or culture.

I had hoped to visit the Rhinelands where the question of the occupation supersedes all else, but I was unable to get there. However I learned first hand something of the conditions prevailing there and took my information preferably from English and Americans familiar with the facts. Upon the truth of the following statement all informants were agreed, the American soldiers being paid in dollars are rich in Germany. Their income is as great as that of the very highest paid university professor. The average is not saving his money but spending it on the available vices of the camps. Wine is cheap in American money although prohibitive to the German. More, Germany like all the rest of the world has put a tax on all things including wine, but the powers that be, maintaining an occupation because Germany does not pay her reparations, refuses to allow the soldiers to pay the tax to help her pay, and consequently the soldier can buy wine at a lesser price than the German. The Americans take to wine as flies to sugar and their debauchery is a scandal which has travelled from the North Pole to the Aegean Sea.

Yet the Germans have said and do say that if there must be an occupation, they prefer the Americans to be a part of it, fearing the greater hostility of the French. Had I a son in the army of occupation, I'd sit on the doorsteps of the White House and Capitol alternately until I got him away. The chances are that the son would deny that anything is wrong, and insist on staying where wine is cheap, but the testimony that the above is a correct summary of the situation is too general and authentic to doubt. Even the conduct of some of the American officers would make any decent American hide his head in shame did he know it.

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Probably all armies of occupations have behaved in similar fashion, and this
one is no more oppressive than they usually are, but in 1914 we all thought we were
civilized. We discovered we were not during that madness, but now that it is
over some of us would like to see a more decided return to civilized ways. The
army of occupation is quartered in part on the people. Houses and parts of houses
are commandeered and the owners who live there do so under continual intimidation
and insult of those who occupy especially when under the influence of cheap wine.

The report was circulated and I gave it credence that the black troops were
removed from the Rhine. They either were not removed as our own Commander on the
Rhine reported to the American Government, or have been returned. The German
Republic has abolished "regulation", yet brothels have been demanded for these
troops and lines of men stand before them waiting their turn. Ugh! These men are
guilty of violations of women in rather higher per cent than the white armies.
There are two points to be considered, the contamination of the people among whom
these things are going on, and the debauchery of the soldiers. What esteem will
these black men ever place upon the virtue of white women when the greatest white
men's government in the world permit them in the name of peace to give free
indulgence to such brutal sensuality? Ugh! How little do great men know of the
psychology of nations! I was told of incidents seemingly beyond doubt far too
indecent to repeat here and too incredible to believe of civilized men.

Let us agree for the moment that Germany started the war and ought to be
punished, severely, harshly punished. Well that's the old way, but we have learned
some things and one is that sensuality, venereal disease, drunkenness, violations
of women, intimidation of people are infections which sweep from nation to nation
and city to city even to the nethermost part of the world. The punishment of
Germany in the occupied territory with its brothels and cheap wine, its drunken
soldiers and sensual officers (despite the efforts of the better ones) is 
sowing dragons teeth for all the nations of earth to reap.


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I have jotted down in these letters a few impressions received in [th]
Central Europe as the result of painstaking effort to get at the truth. I have
avoided drawing conclusions. I know of no panacea for these ills. Europe is
very sick. The financiers must make the first prescription with a remedy for
the depreciated money, the most immediate need. The commercial experts must make
the next prescription in an effort to set the factory chimneys to smoking
once more and to organize the unemployed to the tasks of production. But when 
these things are done, in some ten or twenty or more years, the cure has not been
wrought. War must be effectually and forever put out of the world and the thoughts
of men who occupy themselves today with navies and cannon and airplanes must be
turned to the problem of making this a world for everybody with justice to all.
The depreciated money of Europe is driving millions of men and women to the very
brink of suicide, yet [more] mere money plentiful with purchasing power, another war
would spring out of the ashes of the past before another sun sets.

The League for Peace and Freedom in its call for a Congress to revise the
peace treaties greatly interested the women of Europe. I am glad they began the
agitation with their meeting at the Hague, but any attempt to revise the treaties
however much needed will certainly loose fresh trouble. If the world talks about
the matter for five years however, perhaps it can be achieved without the bursting
of the bonds which hold Europe to a moderate order. I am glad the women have
begun the discussion - men did not seem brave enough. Some day it may be done, but
justice will never be meeted out to all the little groups in Europe according to
their own demands. There are too many claims to every mile of territory.

[*Mar. 10, 1923*]

Article 6

[*France & England*]

Unfortunately I was seized by a bad cold and had to give up the Conferences
in Belgium and Paris. That of Belgium was postponed. France carried hers out with 
great success and the public meeting in the Sorbonne was backed with an enthusiastic audience. The speeches were excellent, the press reports gratifying and the 
suffragists themselves thought they had reached highest water mark. On the next 
day came the Senate vote. While the result disappointed suffragists in other 
countries, the French suffragists knew their Senate and took fresh courage in the great gains the vote indicated. The conference planned for a lively campaign in the 
provinces and the reintroduction of the measure in some form that would be legally permissible. The French suffragists have at this moment more hope and more snap than ever before, with millions of men and women all the world around looking on with a "God bless you".

The Board of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance met in London and sat
for six days. The Board of the International Council Women was also in session and the two boards held two joint sessions to discuss the problems of closer cooperation. The Council gave a luncheon to both Boards and the National Union for Citizenship, the Alliance auxiliary, also gave one. Lady Astor gave a dinner and a reception and Mrs. M._______ invited both boards to tea on the Parliament terrace.

All the British suffragists were tired from the Parliamentary campaign just
closed. Some had campaigned for their party and some for the women candidates. Some 
thirty had been put up, all excellent well-qualified women. Many women had first been named by a non-partisan woman's committee and reported to their respective parties with the request that they should be received as candidates and places found for them on the ballot. These women had been accepted and placed, but the party managers of England resemble those of the United States. They usually assigned the women to places where the seat normally belonged to another party. The women backers of the
candidates were therefore not surprised that none secured [the] election except Lady Astor and Mrs.     who had already served. They were enthusiastic over


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the campaigns and were unanimously convinced that they had gone a long way toward convincing England that more women members are needed in Parliament.

Parliament opened on our first day in London with the usual spectacular
procession including the King and Queen in a golden couch, and the attendance of all the "peeresses of the realm" in ermine and jewels. It is a curious survival among a democratic people of a very ancient ceremony when kings had power. The procession we saw from our hotel window and thought of the flags of Republics floating over the Houses of Parliament in Austria, Germany and Czecho Slovakio, the unexpected and amazing outcome of the Great War.

The conditions of Europe are too blurred just now to see which way things
are tending, but when the blurr has passed off, I am sure we shall see the position of women has been advanced at least 100% and that the idea of democracy has been greatly clarified. It was a mighty and a tragic price to pay but the war did achieve something. Not a soldier shouldered a gun, not a bond was sold, not a government mobilized its powers to help women onward, but after all results are sifted that 
seems the most certain things accomplished. Even so, war is an abomination.

[*for release Mar 10.*]

ARTICLE 7

CROSSING THE EQUATOR

I was congratulated on the prospective quiet of eighteen days on the sea en
route between Southampton and Rio de Janeiro. Instead of quiet, this is an
exciting experience. Before the first day was gone we were anchored before
Cherbourg and bending over the deck rail to watch the interesting procedure of
getting a city full of immigrants aboard with all their baggage to say nothing
of the ladies gowned in Paris models returning to their South American homes.
A day later we were stopping at Corina in Spain and taking on more immigrants.
Then came Villagarcia and Vigo, also in Spain, and three more days passed
enlivened by scenery and the ever changing interest of taking on passengers and
cargoes, for all the transfers are made in little boats which carry everybody
and everything ashore. On the sixth day we stopped for twelve hours before
lisbon and we prepared to do Portugal.

We were transferred as usual in a little boat, took a motor car and a guide
and saw the chief interests of Lisbon, the Royal Palace at Cintra and many small
towns between. In Lisbon a cathedral where lies the bones under a beautiful
tomb of Vascode Gamo has some wonderful cloisters connected with it. I have
never seen more beautiful ones. The monks were turned out in 1834 and a boys
or phan home was placed within. There are now 500 boys there, yet despite the
fact that healthy, frolicsome boys have occupied the place for over 80 years,
the cloisters seem entirely unharmed.

The little donkeys loaded with paniers full of produce or carrying whole
families to market, the houses with colored tiled fronts, the quaint little streets,
the old worldliness of the place, are fascinating and the day was one of rare
enjoyment. It cost just $8.00 to "do Portugal", but two days were consumed in
recovering from the explicit. Then came Madeira, the familiar and ever beloved


Madiera of all the North and South steamer lines.

The sea was mildly choppy and many passengers changed their minds about going
ashore, but not we. We made the trip ashore with no more serious accident than a
few splashes of sea water. In a motor we ascended the hill to the funicular railway.
The funicular carried us up the mountain side through terraced gardens where in dense
growth sweet potatoes, bananas and pineapples vied with each other for space. Little
rose bowered plaster villas tinted with lively colors dotted the landscape, and
great trees of poinsettas in full and regal bloom enlivened the scene with color.
Far below the ocean glistened like burnished steel. Small boys and girls (they
begin when they can say un penna) tossed roses, freesias and wonderful camelias
before each visitor from the moment he steps ashore until he is again in the little
transfer boat, and then shout un penna. I saw the boys playing football with their
left over stock of camelias. At the top a comfortable hotel serves luncheon and
affords opportunities to view the wonderful scene from many points.

The descent is made by brave souls by toboggan. Basket carriages slide
down the smooth cobble stone paved roadway and are kept in reasonable position
by two men with ropes attached to the strange vehicle. It is an experience one
enjoys the second time better than the first. The toboggans have an alarming
way of skidding which rather spoils the enjoyment of the beginner, but confidence
grows with the demonstration that the men can keep the basket from striking the
stone walls sometimes closely bordering the road, or from pitching over a
precipice into the valley far below. At the end of the journey one may take
a drive about town with a similar basket carriage drawn by two tiny, gentle
long horned oxen. A boy[s] runs ahead and at times brushes the flies off the oxen
with a brush he carries and at the end insistently claims a tip. we visited the
fruit market and carried aboard aligator pears, mangoes and custard apples. The
journey back to the ship was safely compassed and the entertainment continued for
the ship itself was possessed by vendors of embroideries, fruits and curios. Boats

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filled with fruits made a lively trade with the third class passengers, the money
making the descent in a basket along a rope and the basket on the return carrying
the produce wanted. Open boats surrounded the steamer filled with half naked boys
begging chances to dive for money, a scene familiar to every semi-tropical port.
Twelve hours after our arrival we departed and called it "the end of a perfect day".

Again it cost $8.00 to make the excursion and took two days to recover from it.
Then we settled down to a quiet pull across the Atlantic, but we threaded our way
through the rocky Cape Verdes and soon found ourselves passing an equally rocky
island off the Brazilian Coast.

Meanwhile we crossed the equator, the tamest of all experiences. An officer
said that once the ship permitted celebrations of the event but some lively fellows
caught everyone who had not crossed the equator and summarily ducked them in the
swimming pool. There were those who didn't consent, so now there is no celebrating
equator crossing. A fine breeze saved us from the heat which is sometimes rather
overpowering.

It is a little difficult for us to remember that Brazil is larger than the
United States. when therefore we paused for seven hours off the Parnambuco Coast,
we had reached the largest of the ten Republics that comprise South America, yet
we were four days from Rio de Janeiro. The "Pernam" Coast is famed for its wild
waves and the difficulties of landing passengers and cargo have been many. So many
men and women broke arms or legs in the attempt to get into the little boats or on the ship
from the boats, that a law was enacted that all passengers are to be carried aboard
in baskets. we anchored at 6 a.m. and all passengers were soon up and ready to see
the performance. The baskets are round and hold together with stout planks on the
inside and ropes on the outside. Straps to hang on are fastened to the walls and each
basket will hold from seven to nine persons standing. A door on one side provides
an entrance. When filled the door is secured and the basket is lifted from the boat
by the baggage crane, swinging back and forth, and just before the direction is


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changed preparatory to depositing it on the deck, the basket whirls around in dizzying
fashion. The people who emerge do not wear the appearance of having enjoyed it.

Pernambuco looks interesting with its smart well constructed buildings, but
trips ashore are not encouraged since putting passengers down by basket is a slow
process. There was plenty of other entertainment. Sharks abounded and projected their
great jaws out of the water for the benefit of awed passengers. People came on board
with articles for sale including parrots and strange looking fruits. An unfamiliar
variety of musk and of water melon, pineapples, bananas, wonderful immense red cheeked
mangoes, sweet yellow peppers which South Americans eat out of hand, and a brown fruit
resembling a potato but sweet and juicy constituted the list. It had been a day
of genuine amusement.

Imagine our surprise when two handsome young men presented themselves. One
was the Director of the State Police and he had come he assured us on behalf of the
government to express to us its good will and its hopes for a successful Congress in
Rio. He was very anxious that we should fully understand that he had been sent by
his government.

The next day came Bahia and again we were greeted by two handsome young 
officers who represented they assured us the Governor of the State whose greetings
they presented. I have yet to learn whether all Brazilian officers are handsome
but these four were. Surely these chicks of the Pan American Congress are coming
on fast under the leadership of Miss Bertha [Bereba] Lutz. We are likely to get our heads
turned by this South American courtesy.

Then came the arrival in Rio de Janeiro. The Bays of Naples and of Rio
Janeiro are rivals, many ardent advocates of each contending that their favorite
is the most beautiful in the world. When I saw the Bay of Naples a few weeks ago on
a perfect October day with Vesuvius in the distance and the long circle of shore line
outlined by hills dotted by villas and villages I thought no other view could be so




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entrancing.  But today in weather as perfect and sunny we entered the Bay of Rio de
Janeiro with the hills and mountains for a background.  The shades and shadows against
the opalescent blue have chased each other in endless and bewitching pictures while
the changing sunlight lent a glorious splendor to the view.  Then I thought of Naples.
Why choose between two marvels of nature.  There is no choice, both are wonderful
splendid glorious and to have seen them both is privilege enough for one lifetime.

It has been a curious experience.  We left England in the cold of her early
winter.  For three days there was no spot on the ship above 60°.  I went to bed
to get warm and slept hugging a hot water bottle under four blankets and a 
comfortable.  We stepped off the steamer in the thinnest garments our wardrobe
afforded into mid-summer with the thermometer at 94°.

[* Feb. 10, 1923.*]

ARTICLE 3

HUNGARY

From Austria we went to Hungary. Although I had purposely withheld the time
of our arrival at Buda Pest and requested that no one meet us, a big group of our old-time suffrage 
friends, Catholic, Protestant and Jew, were at the station. [to meet us.] In the pre-war days it was a rule of hospitality never to be violated in Hungary that visitors receive 
a huge bouquet at the station with an appropriate speech of presentation. I had hoped to spare the Hungarian suffragists this expense or the embarrassment entailed by its omission, but they had found a way. A young girl, niece of the National Suffrage President, whom I had known from her childhood, came forward from the group with one
beautiful chrysantheum and a far more charming speech. It was clear that none of
the formalities were to be omitted.

We were escorted to the Hotel Hungaria, the Congress headquarters in 1913,
and were received by the same imposing array of functionaries, each in a speckless uniform, but a further knowledge of conditions revealed many evidences of departing splendors of this one-time showy and elegant hostelry.

I had asked for opportunity to learn something of Hungarian conditions among
the upper middle classes. The fate of the poor has been amply described in the many campaigns for relief funds and by the American agencies dispensing food. Correspondents 
have given accounts of the sacrifices of the rich, but most reports have been silent about the intellectuals. Our suffrage forces are composed of these, doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers, workers and well-to-do men and women. A dinner was given for me to which came carefully picked representatives of various groups. We had an intimate heart to heart talk. Among the guests was the only woman member of Parliament, 
Anna Ketly. Many other opportunities were given me for interviews with important groups
and I felt that I had learned much in a short time.

The first though in every mind throughout Central Europe is the wide chasm
which yawns between the capacity of the depreciated money to buy and the high prices of


- 2 -

Commodities. Salaries in Hungary have come to be rated by the amount of bread they can buy. No bread used by the masses anywhere in Europe, except perhaps England, 
is white. The quality varies among the countries and in different sections of the 
same country. The cheapest bread we Americans would consider quite unfit to eat. 
Yet a good stenographer in Hungary at the highest wage paid her class of work is only able to buy one kilo of brown bread daily for her family. At the rate of exchange 
when we were in Hungary, the Premier's salary is the equivalent of EIGHT American dollars per month; the monthly salary of a member of parliament $5.60.

A suffrage friend of mine gave a woman four hundred crowns (or $80.00
in pre-war values) and this gift was made at great personal sacrifice; yet the
receiver of the money in profuse thanks for it mentioned as a great boon that she 
had been able to buy three entire long loaves of bread with it, which had greatly delighted the children. Bread has become such a luxury that the poor have been 
obliged to find something cheaper to eat. What, no one appeared to know. All 
classes agreed that bread is the most pressing problem in Hungary. Coffee, which 
was the universal breakfast beverage, is no longer possible even to the one time 
rich. There is little milk, and that is strictly reserved for invalids and 
children. Even tea has become impossible for most of the population. In the old 
days, a suffrage household I know was prosperously supported by the father, a high class banker's assistant. He still holds the same position, but his wife teaches 
English and two daughters add their earnings to the family treasury. The 
combined income enables them to drink tea for breakfast, and to have meat four 
times a week, but they can have no butter or jam with their bread, both customary Hungarian appetizers. Nor is there money left over for clothes. The son, a civil 
engineer is his first employment boards at home and is allowed to use all his wages 
for his clothing which even then is insufficient. Occasionally banks and other 
large enterprises purchase at wholesale prices stuff which is resold to their 
employees. Then it happens that all the women whose husbands or fathers are

- 3 -

are connected with the institution may perhaps have a new dress but all from the same piece!

Yet all absorbing is this daily struggle of every household to cope with 
the food and clothes question, my informants all agreed that they could bear it all 
with equanimity were they supported by the hope that better conditions would be restored, but the presence of an oppressor government which threatens daily injustices, hangs over them like a black cloud.

It must be remembered that immediately after the war a bloodless revolution 
set up a Republic with Karolyi as president. This government extended universal suffrage for men and women and lasted about five months. The Republic was overturned 
by Communists who in turn set up a soviet government. They ruled by force and intimidation, arresting and interning all who openly opposed them and especially 
those who had stood with Karolyi. Men were put to death in unbelievable cruelty and the prisons were rapidly filling with political prisoners overflowed into hastily improvised internment camps. here men disappeared and their families even yet do 
not know their fate; or perhaps long afterwards learned some of the tragic details 
of the cruelties they had suffered before they were put to death. It is no wonder 
that men and women were silenced by the belief that self preservation demanded that no open opposition be expressed. Many found too late that this reasoning had the contrary effect.

After a short and horribly inhuman regime, General Horthy overthrew the 
Communists and set up a dictatorship. The pendulum now swung as in Italy, from the extreme left to right, and a "white terror" succeeded the "red terror" with details 
so similar that the rank and file knew little difference. The internment camps were 
filled again with men and women arrested for causes unknown to them or their families. 
The failure to condemn the Communists when they were in control was now construed into 
evidence of sympathy with them. Trials were long delayed and sometimes never


- 4 -

held. After languishing in a detention camp for many months, dirty, ill kept, 
unsanitary, with poor provisions for any of the necessities of life, men and women 
were sometimes randomly released and sometimes shot. Men and women were arrested on 
the slightest suspicion. Espionage was common and personal animosity, jealousy, 
or a desire to curry favor with the authorities, led to reporting an overcolored conversation, quite innocent in itself, and an arrest would follow.

When outsiders protested against the injustice and rank cruelties imposed 
upon persons probably innocent, the universal defense was that the Communists had done worse. The principal procedure of the reds and whites has been the same, punishment for those who do not agree with the powers that be.

Of late there has been much controversy in the American press over the point: "Is Hungary still ruled by the White terror". The truth is that the same group which introduced the White terror is still in authority. The arrests and sudden disappearance are not so frequent but it is the government of a dictatorship. A concession to democracy was made by the election of a Parliament which in turn elected General Horthy and his government. When however, the elections were held, armed soldiers surrounded the polls and except in Budapest the voting was all viva voce. Under these conditions the Government won an easy victory and the form of electing it to a continuance of power was not only swiftly complied with but the same Parliament took away the universal suffrage granted by the Karolyi Revolution and considerably restricted it for both men and women. Women are still voters but on somewhat less generous qualifications than those accorded men. The white terror of today is not so terrible as that at the outset of the Horthy government, but the power to re-establish 
it is there and the people live in dread of the future.

Before the war although Hungary had its local quarrels and petitions was not particularly progressive, freedom of opinion and expression was far more liberal than 
in any other central European country. No passports were needed for the traveller.

-5-
Now, the tourist must carry his own passport to the police immediately after arrival, unless a very exceptional excuse can be given, and there he waits in a seemingly interminable line for attention. As tourists are few these days one wonders what has caused the presence of so many passport carriers. The answer is interesting. Most of the territory which once comprised Hungary was out off and given away by the peace treaties. Fiume was its port and the attempt to make it neutral will probably give it to Italy eventually. Slovakia went to Czecho Slovakia and big slices went to Romania and to Jugo Slovia. There is naturally much passing to and fro among these one time Hungarian territories by people who were once Hungarians, and each country who got a slice is suspicious of Magyar agents who may stir insurrection, and therefore great difficulties are made with the passports. Hungary is as suspicious of those who come from these expatriated territories and examines each passport with scrutinizing care. A woman I know had a son in Fiume and one in Zava both in Hungary before the war. She wished to visit them both but months have passed and she has not yet received consent from the Jugo Slavia government to enter Zava. This is just one evidence of how treaties of peace sowed fresh seeds of war.

In the midst of all these many troubles, a sinister anti semitic movement
sprung up and sorry vengeance has been wreaked on many an innocent Jew. The reasons for this recurrence of old time hostility are probably many but certainly one is to be found in the fact that many communist leaders in Hungary and elsewhere have been Jews. A Hungarian Jew told me that a young Jewish Communist said that "the Communist movement was a fight between the young and the old Jews". Communism however, has far from won even the young Jews of Hungary, but the persecution in a thousand ways move on. Catholics found a cause for anti semitism in the fact that Jewish refugees from Poland and Galicia during the war settled in Hungary and became unscrupulous profiteers in food. Yet neither of these explanations can


-6-

justify the dismissal of well equipped young Jewish woman from employments as has been done in clearly discriminating manner.

A movement called the Waking Magyars has also arisen, intensely racial,
nationalistic, brutal and "patriots". The indications resemble the beginnings of
the Fascisti movement in Italy and thousands of Hungarian people await its further development with dread. It is strongly anti semitic which the Fascisti movement is net. Its eventual gains are still hidden in the chaos of thought of the leaders. Meanwhile its manifestations do not inspire confidence.

Like the Fascisti,  the Waking Magyars are strongly anti feminist. For example
an especially clever girl medical student, made her way to the University for the 
opening animal registration. Young "Waking Magyars" kicked her down the entrance stairs and drove her home. Owing to her unusual qualifications, a professor managed to get her registered without her presence. On the first lecture day she appeared, but "waking Magyar" students kicked her downstairs in brutal and barbaric manner. The words "kicked her down stairs" are literal and correct. She went to Berlin to complete her medical education.

The Waking Magyars stand for the return of all the lost Hungarian territory
and boldly say they recognize but one way to get it back, and that by war. The future of Hungary and its unhappy people depends largely, perhaps solely, upon the line of development and the leadership of this movement.

There is no happiness in Hungary. Magyar has turned against Magyar; Magyar 
against Jew. The Government has no confidence in "the people" and the people little in the government. Meanwhile prices rise and the value of crowns fall, and the household problem grown daily more and more desperate.

After listening to many accounts of much suffering from many people I
exclaimed "why the people must be in a state of perpetual despair". "No"replied

- 7 -

the editor of a leading newspaper "they were, but that is past. The people are too
tired for such wearing emotions. They are now merely stupified".

Yet in the midst of this dark spot, I saw a glowing promise of "the good time
coming". After the public meeting held at 6 p.m. at which I spoke, an invited few
took dinner at the famous Deli's at 8.30. Among the guests, about thirty in number,
was a Catholic Priest, Father Gieswein. He is a familiar figure at all peace
gatherings and advocated woman suffrage in Hungary when there were few voices
raised in its behalf. He still believes with faith unchanged in the brotherhood
of man and that governments resting upon the equal authority of men and women will
bring peace and justice. The well known Jew, Mr. Goldmark, was as clear and firm in
that same faith. As I looked around that long table and saw the familiar faces of
men and women I had learned to know during the preparations for the Congress in
1913 and my three previous visits, I was exalted to the old optimism. In the midst
of Hungary's woes the suffrage group with Jew, Catholic and Protestant united and
strong, understanding and unafraid, are still a center carrying on. While such people
live and work there is no [not] real cause for despair.

Yet up on the high hill overlooking beautiful Budapest in the ancient palace, [liv]
lives the dictator Horthy and down below young Hungarians with sharp toed boots kick a
woman medical student down the University stairs! Wars bring such strange unsettling
of the human equation that I should think the terrors of peace would complete the
education begun by the terrors of war and make the whole world rise en masse to put
an end to them. I had learned in the days gone by to love Hungary and it was with
much genuine heartache that I witnessed the sad troubles through which she is passing.
O! man, what a sad mess of things thou hast made!

NEW YORK TRIBUNE,
THURSDAY, MAY 17, 1923.

MRS. CATT DECLINES TO CONTINUE LEADER

She Pleads Age When Women's
International Conference at
Rome Renominates Her.

URGES YOUNG CANDIDATE

Resolution is Adopted to Seek to
Elect More of the Sex to
the Parliaments.

ROME, May 16 (Associated Press).-
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt was greeted
with a tremendous ovation when she was
renominated today for the Presidency of
the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
The delegates rose and cheered
boisterously, waving their handkerchiefs
and then renewing the rounds of hand-clapping.
After the ovation Mrs. Catt
took the platform and said:

"I simply cannot do it.  I was going
to offer to look after a couple of continents,
but the world is too large for me.
At this age you need young women full
of spice and energy and all that sort of
thing."

A voice called out:  "You are not too old."

Mrs. Catt continued:  "You are going
to have another President."

She was interrupted again with a 
chorus of "Nos," to which she replied:
"Just now I can only work regular
union hours.  My day is past for a 
twenty-four-hour day.  I call upon you 
to give the next President your heartiest
support."

Electioneering for the various other
candidates has been exceedingly brisk
about the Exposition Hall.  The most
likely candidate is Mrs. Corbett Ashby
of Great Britain, who has already been 
offered support from various
delegations.  Miss Ann Furuhjelm, a member
of the Finnish Parliament, is also prominently
mentioned for the office.  South
Africa, India, Chile and Argentina are
insistent upon the acceptance of Mrs.
Catt.

Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, wife of the Governor
of Pennsylvania, has been nominated
by the American delegation for
member of the Executive Board, as is 
also Miss Berta Lutz of Brazil.

The convention has considerable American
atmosphere.  There is more English
spoken than any other language, and
the Germans, Finns, Scandinavians,
French and Italians all seem to prefer
English.  The presence of numerous
American newspaper women and the
constant reference to the women of the
American delegation makes the affair
outstandingly American.

Dame Rachel Crowder, a member of
the secretariat of the League of Nations,
addressed the convention today on
the work of the League.  She dealt especially
with the branches of the League's
work devoted to women.  She urged enfranchised
women to use the vote to insist
that more women be sent to the 
League as delegates.

An increase in the number of women in
national Parliaments was demanded by
practically all the speakers at this 
morning's session of the congress.  It
was a sitting devoted to enfranchised
women, many of the speakers being
themselves members of the Parliament
of their nation.

Mrs. Catt's resolution urging that
every effort be made by the suffragists
to increase the numbers of the members
of their sex holding Parliament
seats was presented and unanimously
passed while the chair was occupied by
Miss Furuhjelm.  A committee composed
of Americans, British, Germans and 
Scandinavians, all of whom have votes, 
will be appointed to further the 
campaign for more legislators.

Mrs. Frederick Mason of New York,
in addressing the convention, said that
only women fitted for office by experience
and education should be endorsed
by women's organizations.  There 
should be no fight between the sexes 
for political power, she added.

A long discussion took place as to 
whether the women should form their
own political party.  The speakers were
divided as to whether efficiency would 
be served by women joining the present
parties.  Frau Von Hessen, member of
the German Reichstag, said that wherever
there was a proportional system of
electing Members of Parliament, such
as existed in Italy, Germany and Poland,
the women should form their own
political party, and would thus stand a 
good chance of electing more members.

Other speakers contended that the 
women could make better progress by
joining the present parties and thus
having a party organization behind
them.

June 16, 1923     7

All the
World
at Rome

By
Marjorie
Shuler

By courtesy of the Public Ledger
Premier Mussolini following the translation into English of his address
to the Suffrage Congress at Rome. Mrs. Catt at his right. 

The CITIZEN here takes a radical step
—it publishes a two-part serial. The
subject is the Rome Suffrage Congress.
Part one, herewith, is the story of the
events of the Congress reported socially
for the CITIZEN by Miss Marjorie
Shuler. In the next issue—part two—
Mrs. Catt, who has just returned, will
interpret in detail the most important
action of the Congress over which she
presided.

—————

NEVER was a more severe test
put upon the international consciousness
of women than in the
ninth congress of the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance at Rome, Italy,
from May 12 to 19. With daily reports
of French advances in the Ruhr;
with Hungary looking askance at 
Czecho-Slovakia and Rumania; with
Czechs watching Slovaks and Slovaks
watching Czechs; with most of the European
nations touched with resentment
at the United States for remaining outside
the League of Nations, and with
Italian suffragists declaring that any
talk of peace made by the Congress
would endanger their cause with the
Fascists—with all of this creating a
tenseness and strain beyond any power
of description, the fact that the women
of forty-three countries did talk out their
differences and hammer out a program
upon which all could agree, is the greatest
proof that could possibly be offered 
of the effectiveness and usefulness to
the world of the International Woman
Suffrage Alliance.

Peace—First

The big international problems were
taken up and declarations were made
upon them in spite of all difficulties. The
women of France took the lead in urging
a peace resolution. And from every
side there came concessions and compromises
which proved the unity which
all the time exists, needing only the
open vision, the open mind and the open
heart to bring it within the comprehension
of mankind.

Based on the sound whereas that all
other progress depends on peace, the
peace resolution affirmed the duty of
women's working for economic reconstruction,
reconciliation of the nations,
the substitution of judicial methods for
force, and promotion of the "conception
of human solidarity as superior to
racial, class or national solidarity." In
addition, the convention declared for the
adhesion of all nations to the League of
Nations—for "the open door through
which Germany might be able to enter
[in Mrs. Catt's words] and the United
States might be persuaded to enter."

Discussions in the Congress followed
the recommendations of four standing
committees under whose auspices conferences
were held on the first day. For
two years the committees had been at
work, in a thoroughly modern and scientific
way with questionnaires and investigations,
on four great phases of the
status of women: 1) The Right to
Work and Equal Pay, Dr. Margherita
Ancona, of Italy, chairman; 2) The
Maintenance of Motherhood, and the Illegitimate
Child, under Miss Eleanor
Rathbone of England; 3) The Nationality
of Married Women, Miss Chrystal
Macmillan, of England, chairman, and
4) Moral Questions, headed by Mme. de
Witt Schlumberger, of France.

In some ways the most dramatic of
the discussions was that centering about
the nationality of married women. This
was because of the passage in the United
States of the Cable Act, which conferred
independent nationality on American 
married women, and the problems it
has given rise to in the passport offices
of other countries lacking such legislation
—some women now having two nationalities,
some none. The resolution
passed by the Congress provided that
everywhere "a married woman should
be given the same right as a man to retain
or change her nationality," and
asked the governments of the world for
international action to make this principle
universal.

On Equal Right to Work and Pay,
the Congress declared "all avenues of
work should be open to women" and
that the only interpretation of the expression
"equal pay for equal work"
which is acceptable to the Alliance is
that men and women shall be paid at
the same rate . . . in the same occupation 
or grade. It voted for freedom of
married women to work.

The severest conflict over this report
came with regard to the declaration on
protective legislation for women workers.
Some of the Holland delegation
and a large section of the Scandinavian 
delegates stood for the abolition of protective
legislation for women. The
United States was solidly for it. The
vote was overwhelmingly in favor of
protective legislation where it is desired 
by the women themselves, and against
its imposition "contrary to the wishes of
the women concerned." When the report
was adopted, the applause was led
by the fraternal delegate of the International
Federation of Working Women,
Signora Casartelli Cabrini of Italy. 

A Wife's Right to Income

Considerable discussion also developed
over an economic program modeled
after the new Scandinavian laws
which give women the right to a proportion
of their husbands' incomes and in
turn provide that in cases of disability
the husband shall be entitled to a part
of his wife's income. But the program
was adopted—and another blow dealt to
the old idea of women's essential dependence. 
The Congress expressed the
modern view of homemaking in basing
its action on the "belief that married 
women who are bringing up children
. . . are doing work of as great importance

8     THE WOMAN CITIZEN

to the community as those men
and women who are producing material
wealth or performing remunerated service
of head or brain." This same report
recommended the payment of allowances
to mothers for dependent children,
and it was carried, though not without
protests over the weakness of such an
economic standard.

The social morality program was not
adopted until the last day of the session
and then only when some of its strongest
medical features had been dropped. The
delay in adopting the report, the evident
lack of understanding of the technical
medical issues involved, and the closeness
of the votes on the issues led Mrs.
Catt to declare repeatedly her belief that
questions of this kind had no place in
an organization devoted to political or
citizenship activities.

These were the great international
problems which faced the women. But
there was a private and internal difficulty
in the determination of Mrs. Catt 
not to stand again for re-election. Ever
since the organization of the Alliance in
Washington in 1902 Mrs. Catt has
guided the destinies of the international
organization. During that time woman
suffrage has spread from four states in
the United States, New Zealand and the
Isle of Man to cover a large portion
of the world. The number of national
woman's suffrage organizations has increased
from five until every independent
nation in the world with a stable
government now has its woman suffrage
society. Of the forty-three nations represented
at this Congress (out of a total
of sixty nations in the world), the delegates
from twenty-five are voters on
equal terms with men, those from two
nations are voters in their municipalities, 
(Continued on page 25)

Of Presidents
and
Politics 

And 
Monticello,
National
Shrine

Monticello
© Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. C.

Your Business in Washington
By Elizabeth K. Phelps Stokes

June 8, 1923.

WHAT your correspondent at the
Capital would like to write this
week would be—a hundred
thousand men, lodge members, dressed
up and acted like monkeys all the week,
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
for the fun of it; and the chairman
of the Republican National Committee
here became verbally unrestrained, attacking
the policies of the President of
the United States, on his own party's
choice.

Alas, how seldom one can enjoy such
free expression! For women would not
be women if they said "Look at us!
We do not run to such extravagances.
Our convention deportment is quiet and
our publicity restrained. Were we to
make a show of ourselves, we would be
condemned by the wide world for
'woman's folly.'" No, a woman could
not say that, but no one could prevent
her from thinking it.

The furore caused by the intemperate
publicity of John T. Adams, chairman
of the Republican National Committee,
when he issued the statement to
the effect that England and the European
powers "are out to 'job' the United
States at every possible turn" was one
of regret rather than concern. But it
will have a direct bearing on the coming
presidential campaign because it
involves the development of the campaign's
principal issue, namely, foreign
policy. So let us skeletonize the situation.

During the presidential campaign of
1920 when Woodrow Wilson personally
traveled over the country campaigning
for the League of Nations, thirty-one
Republicans of high standing in the
party came together and decided that
the health of the Republican Party
would be better if it espoused a middle
course rather than isolation toward foreign
affairs. It did not want to join
the Democratic side in complete approval
of the League, but it did come
to the conclusion that some kind of a
League would be the best solution of
the European problem. Consequently,
it issued a manifesto appealing for the
election of Senator Harding on a platform
of an association of nations, which
has been known since as the letter of
the thirty-one. It is likely to become
an historical document. In its essence
it read:

"The undersigned, who desire that
the United States shall do her full part
in association with other civilized nations
to prevent war, have earnestly considered
how we may contribute most
effectively to that end by our votes in
the coming election. The question between
the candidates is not whether our
country shall join in such an association.
It is whether we shall join under
an agreement containing the exact provisions
negotiated by President Wilson
at Paris or under an agreement which
omits or modifies some of those provisions
that are very objectionable to great
numbers of the American people." It
concluded by stating, "We therefore believe
that we can most effectively advance
the cause of peace by supporting
Mr. Harding for election to the presidency."
It was signed by Charles Evans 
Hughes, Herbert Hoover, Elihu Root, 
George W. Wickersham, Henry L. Stimson,
and others eminent in law, science
and other professions, but particularly
strong in Republican prestige.

At the recent National Conference of
Social Work, President Lowell of Harvard
delivered an impelling speech in
which he challenged the statement by
President Harding that during his campaign
for election three years ago, he,
as the Republican standard-bearer, had 

Translation
Apr. 27, 1924

Page 1

The Truth of the Mexican Question

Reading various articles on the Mexican question published in American periodicals, one finds either that they are interested in keeping General Obregon in power, for the purpose of maintaining the enormous concessions which the Mexican President is offering to American capital and the American government, or that they are deceived by the proagandists of General Calles, or of Oregon himself.

The following facts are related in order to clear away this misunderstanding. They are merely the shadow of the outrages and the violations of law and morality, which the present government is carrying on for the sole purpose of maintaining its will, even though it is in conflict with public opinion, which condemns the presidential activity carried on in favor of the unpopular candidate Plutarco Elias Calles.

It is certainly true that General Obregon governed well enough during the period prior to his break with Mr. De la Huerta; he had such excellent co-workers as Vasconcelos, Alessio Robles, and De la Huerta himself, who, at home and abroad, gave prestige to the government.

But from the time the electoral campaign began, President Obregon, forgetting his promises to the people and to the revolutionary party, by which he agreed to give guarantees so that popular suffrage might be realized, -- an ideal dreamed by the revolutionary party from the time of Madero up to now, - made himself into the chief of propaganda for a determined candidate; in such a cynical and obstinate manner has he used the power which the placed in his hands, wielding it to subjugate that same people, that it seems there must be very private interests which he wished to save, and which depend on the election of Calles as president, or the reelection of Obregon 

Page 2

himself. Americans, who do not know the history of Mexico except through the yellow press, having to justify the American intervention in this country, perhaps believe that Mexico is enjoying under Obregon the first good government it has had. We are a free people par excellence, and our governors, sons of the people, must strive always for the liberation of the masses, except in such exceptional cases as that of Porfirio Diaz, and Victoriano Huerta. It is equally true that often enough the governors became tyrannical autocrats, and this is the case with General Obregon. 

In order to explain more clearly the true Mexican situation, here are concrete instances, entirely public, some of them made known and commented on by the press.

General Obregon came to the presidency with the general sympathy of the country, not only because it expected good government from him, but because he had defeated the presidential imposition which Carranza had tried to make in favor of the unpopular candidate Bonillas, the same thing which Obregon is now trying to repeat for General Calles.

From the moment he took the chair, Obregon counted on the help of all the revolutionaries, and more or less on the hostility of the American government, which took as pretext for not granting recognition the assassination of President Venustiano Carranza, ordered or tolerated by Obregon and Gonzalez. 

At the same time it was known that General Calles, Secretary of the Interior, wanted to be the future president, and it was a secret to no one that, seizing the material and moral advantages which his position as Minister of the Interior gave him, he began to unfold his electoral propaganda, notwithstanding the fact that this is forbidden by the Constitution, and is highly immoral 




Page 3

kind of politics. One of the methods of his electoral campaign was to buy the leaders of the yellow workers (not the reds, for they understood the trick) such men as Morons, Salcedo, Gasca, Moneda, Yudico, etc., by placing them in high, well paid governmental positions. Moreover he selected a group of agents among whom were strangers of very doubtful histories, real adventurers like Haberman and some others who had made money exploiting socialism, in spite of the fact that the Mexican constitution forbids definitely that foreigners shall mix in internal politics. 

At the same time, Ms. De la Huerta, Minister of the treasury, counted also on the sympathy of the laboring classes, a sympathy which he had won during his six months as President of the Republic, just before General Obregon came into power. 

For this reason, the laborers both yellow and red came to the Minister of the Treasury for aid in their disputes, which made General Calles jealous. It is well known that he sent to De la Huerta demanding that he intervene no more in the affairs of the laborers, because he was alienating the elements which Calles counted on to make his electoral campaign. From that moment De la Huerta, like a good friend, sent to Calles all who solicited his aid, which shows that he not have personal ambitions toward the presidency of the Republic. 

Undoubtedly the blameless conduct of the public and private life of Mr. De la Huerta, and his magnificent work in the Treasury under the Obregon government, made public opinion have much sympathy for him, and if no one put him forward as a presidential candidate, it was because they knew that he did not wish to again be president, and also because it was supposed that De la Huerta and Calles were struggling for the same ideals. In this latter


Page 4

supposition, how fooled the revolutionaries were!

As the year 1924 approached the activity of the Secretary of the Interior and of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Labor (a group of yellow workers) increased, aided frankly by the President of the Republic, who, along with Calles, placed his agents in magnificent governmental positions. On the other hand, the Governor of Veracruz, a Calles agent, kept the yellow laboring bodies in continual agitation, provoking a constant strike which was useless except that it made for the economic instability of the state. At the same time a group of the red workers had been constantly antagonized, having their strikes smothered by the force of the army. 

The National Cooperative Party had been aiding Calles. Francisco Villa had shown sympathy for De la Huerta. Obregon and Calles saw in him a danger for the candidacy of Calles, and the latter ordered him killed. From that time on the people took account of the personal intentions of General Calles and the President, and of their immoral proceedings, and in truth, this assassination was the beginning of a series of political crimes which both the functionaries and their agents have been committing. 

With the assassination of Villa a great scandal was produced in the Chamber of Deputies. Calles was publicly accused of the crime, and as a consequence, the Cooperative Party left him, and sought a candidate who would give securities of honor. This candidate was Don Adolfo De la Huerta.

About that time the Americans Warren and Paine came to Mexico, and with Ross and Gonzalez Roa, Mexican representative of Obregon, made the secret compacts which no one imagined would result in such ruinous consequences for Mexico, and such shameful ones for

5.

Obregon. 

Among the terms of those compacts is one which obliges Mexico
to accept and play [pay] claims made by Americans for losses suffered in
their interests since 1868, debts which were not recognized even
by Porfirio Diaz, a great friend and giver of concessions to America,
nor by later governors.

Thus Obregon bought the recognition of his government by the
United States.

Mr. De la Huerta opposed those compacts, and that was the
first disagreement between him and Obregon. 

In order to make more certain the imposition of Calles as
President, Obregon began a series of violations of the sovereignty
of states, removing Governors on any pretext, and putting in their
places individuals without conscience who promised to make Calles
president even though it were contrary to the public will; thus 
he imprisoned the governor of Michuacán, taking no account of the
Supreme Court of Justice of the nation; he persecuted the governor 
of Coahila; he imposed a governor on Nuevo León against the will
of the Senate which is the only body authorized to solve conflicts
of this nature; he imposed a governor on San Luis Potosí, authorizing
the Federal Army to imprison the city councils of the towns of
that state; he imprisoned the governors of Quérétare and of Puebla.

Before the outrages committed in Nuevo León and San Luis Potosí,
Mr. De la Huerta protested vigorously against the decisions of
Obregon and of General Calles; and as a consequence, Mr. De la
Huerta ceased to [be] the Minister of the Treaury. 

From that time on public opinion leaned openly to the side of
De la Huerta; clubs, associations, etc., were formed to ask him to
accept the candidacy for the presidency, which he had been refusing. 


6.

Then parades were organized in the cities of Mexico, Pachuca, 
Veracruz, Tampico, and others, and confronted by such demonstrations
of public opinion, Mr. De la Huerta declared that, in case the
majority of Mexican citizens should elect him as President of
the Republic, he would accept the positions and would know how to
conduct it as a revolutionary governor.

With this acceptance began the work of electoral propaganda
in favor of De la Herta. The Cooperative Party called a national
convention which was held in the City of Mexico and which formed
a revolutionary platform and elected De la Huerta its presidential
candidate. The railroad workers did the same, and the red laborers,
in their convention, declared that although their principles forbade
them to aid capitalistic governments, such as are all [of] this
social regime, yet they would vote for De la Huerta at the presidential
elections.

As soon as De la Huerta accepted the candidacy, the government
centered its fury against him and his party, showing a terrible
partiality as will be seen in the following incidents.

At the time of the great popular manifestation in favor of
De la Huerta, and when he declared through the press that "he
would leave his fortune in the hands of the people", General
Obregon, through Pani the new Secretary of the Treasury, launched
in the press a tremendou[s] accusation against de la Huerta, in which
he pretended to show that De la Huerta had "submerged the nation 
in moral and material bankruptcy", which thing, Obrgon declared,
had not been discovered before because De la Huerta had deceived 
him.

It was a terrible scandal; public opinion protested at the old 

7.

political trick which was being used to render De la Huerta useless
as a citizen. Mr. De la Huerta denied through the press the accusations
which were made against him; Pani was called to the Chamber
of Deputies and it was shown that none of his proofs were sure.
Pani left the Chamber carrying the laughter of the public which
had been present at the session. Desiring to prove that there was
bankruptcy, from the time of the departure of De la Huerta from
the Treasur[e]y the pay of federal employees was suspended, and they
are still behind in the payment. Mr. De la Huerta asked the Senate
for an extra session so that he might present a detailed report
concerning his financial work of more than three years which would
disprove the accusations made against him. The Senate granted it,
and the calumnies were destroyed.

During the sessions of the Chamber of Deputies in which
De la Huerta defended himself and various other matters of the
presidential policy were considered, the Calles faction threatened
the Cooperative [x] deputies in various ways; a Calles agent
killed a partisan of Mr. De la Huerta in the Chamber.

The police aprehended the assassin, witnesses declared
before the judge that they had seen the crime, and nevertheless,
the Callist was placed at liberty the following day. 

Two days later, two soldiers denounced a plot in which the
chief of the garrison, together with the leaders of the yellow
laborers and General Calles, would try to assassenate within
the Chamber or at the hour of the Chamber's closing, a group of
Cooperative deputies, chief among which was Jorge Priete Laurens, 
chief of the Cooperative Party. The plan was frustrated, thanks
to some military officials, among whom were those who told of
it, and all of whom refused to be accomplices in the crime. 


8.

The Deputues denounced the deeds to Obregon, who denied the occurence,
notwithstanding the fact that the details of the plot were
published in the press, and that, now that they were not able to
commit the crime, Morones, [x] and some other members of the
the same laboring group went to the offices of the Committee Pro-Huerta
(corner of Francisco I Madero street and the National Theater) 
and discharged their pistols at the employees of the office [and] 
the group of people who were there.

As this blow did not give them any favorable result, the Chi[e]f
of Police of Mexico haled De la Huerta and the delegates of the
Cooperative Convention up before the Supreme Court on the charge of
having denounced publicly the rulers of the state and other federal
authorites, and of pursuing clubs and the other De la Huerta groups.
(Note that Porfirio Diaz used these same tactics against Madero.)

Fortunately the accusation of the Chief of P[o]lice did no good,
for the scandal was enormous, and the people recognized it as
a strategem of the government.

Then they had recourse to another plan; they accused Mr. De
la Huerta of having given the railroad workers money for his
presidential propaganda; photographs of the documents themselves
were published, and at last it was declared that those documents
were false, and in the same manner this new accusation fell to the
ground.

From then on the threats and persecutions of De la Huertists
grew. The government spent money freely on Callist propaganda. 
There are employees of the Treasury who saw warrants signed for
enormous quantities of money in favor of General Calles, the very
documents saying that those quantities were to be dedicated to 
Callist propaganda. All that is known everywhere, and the partisans
of General Calles do not deny it, for 80% of the people are

9.

DelaHuertists, interested in making such things public.

The Callists organized pro-Calles parades in Mexico and Puebla
by taking to those cities great groups of country people who did
not know where they were going, nor whether they should should
Viva Calles" or "Viva De la Huerta".

The day of the parade in Puebla, the celebrators were met with
empty streets, for the people shut themselves up in their houses
to show their sympathy for De la Huerta. The Callists, furious at
this, killed two railway workers in the station yard, and shot some
peaceful bystanders. They committed equal indignities in [the City of] Mexico.

For both parades, the government put at the dispositions of
the Callists fifteen trains in order that they might transport the
people for the parade without expense.

Finally, powerless to render De la Huerta useless as a
citizen and as a [c]andidate, they wanted to kill him, and it was then
that he had to flee to Veracruz, where he took refuge with Guadalupe
Sánchez. And as a definite protest, this General telegraphed to
Obregon that he could no longer uphold a governor who trampled on
the law and [x] violated individual security; that he preferred to
uphold the Constitution and not a faithless governor. Rémule
Figueroa in Guerrero, Enrique Estrada in Jalisco, Maycott in Oaxaca, 
and others of lesser importance in the rest of the country, all of
them revolutionaries since the time of Madero, who had struggled
for so many years defending individual rights and public liberties,
did the same thing. Aiding Guadalupe Sánchez, Salvador Alvarado,
Domingo Ramirez Garrido, Antonio Villareal, all known revolutionists,
they favored rebellion as a last resort against tyranny.

Within two or three days revolution broke out against Carrillo
Puerto, Callist agent, in Merida, Yucatan. It is well known that
Carrillo Puerto, allied with Morones, committed a long series of
crimes, and at the same time he had many personal enemies in Yucatan. 


10.

His shooting was a logical consequence of his conduct, a shooting
in which De la Huerta had no part because he [x] did not yet control
the different rebel nuclei, and moreover, because the cases
are numerous in which De la Huerta has given liberty in Veracruz
to his enemies taken prisoner on the field of battle; for example,
two battalions with their leaders defeated in Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, 
and headed by a nephew of General [x] Obregon, and who later
turned traitor to De la Huerta in the fight at Esperanza; General
Roberto Cejudo, made prisoner in Tuxpan, who had just arrived in
Mexico; General Lazare Cardenas, wounded and cured near Estrada, and
who is now with Obregon again, fighting the revolutionaries; the
officers of the garrison of Morella, pardoned when the plaza was
taken by the rebels, and today found on the side of the government. 

Before the revolution began, General Calles in the press 
accused the Spaniard Adolfo Priete, Manager of the Iron and Steel
Smelter Company of Monterey, of mixing in politics in favor of
De la Huerta; he also accused an American of the same thing; he did
not recognize their right to mix in the internal affairs of Mexico.
Nevertheless, when the revolution began, Morones and Habermann
(the latter a foreigner) sought the aid of Gompers (as in other times
the conservatives sought the aid of Napoleon III) who wrote to the
yellow Mexican laborers urging them to aid General Calles and Obregon.
He declared that he would use all his influence to prevent a single
cartridge being sold to the rebels, and he would seek the official
aid of Coolidge. This time General Calles received the intrusion of
foreigners into the internal affairs of Mexico not with protests, but
with joy. More than that, General Obregon contracted with the
government of the United States terrible promises for the country,
placing it in the hands of Yankee power, on the condition that they
would help him to hold it together; for instance the secret pacts 

11.
between González Rea and Ross (Mexicans) and Warren and Paine
(Americans); the concession to the Wolvin Line whereby they have
a monopoly of the the working of all the products in the richest regions of Tabasco, CIapas, Coaxacoa, Guerrero and Michoacán, a territory almost equal
to the state of Minnesota, as the declarations in the press affirm.

We have only had one president who was traitor to the state
on such a scale, Santa Ana, cause of the War of 1847 with the United
States. It remains for Obregon to be a second Santa Ana. Mr. Coolidge
has declared himself openly an accomplice of Obregon, for in exchange
for cartridges and rifles, Obregon will sell the rights of the country
which were won with so much Mexican blood, and ratified in the 27th
article of our Constitution of 1917. All the revolutionary victories
will be destroyed if Obregon triumphs.

As the Senators and Deputies recognized the ruinousness of the
compacts, it was proposed not to have a quorum in the Senate, so that
they could not be signed. Then the President and his accomplices 
dared the most horrid of the political crimes, taking as a pretext
the death of Carrillo Puerto. Morones in the Camber of Deputies 
made a speech threatening to kill (to apply "direct action" as he
says) the Cooperative senators and deputies. Within two days
the terrible threat began to be fulfilled; two deputies were shot
in the Colonia Roma at mid day. A boy who was crossing the street
died, pierced by the bullets. The following day the yellow workers
declared in a public meeting that they would go on applying
"direct action" until the partisans of De la Huerta were obliged to 
flee, so that their successors could be called ad a confirmation
of the pacts be obtained. The press made an outcry, but it was
useless. A few days later Senator Francisco Field Jurado was
assassinated by agents of Morones and the Chief of the Garrison


12.

The crime was committed at half past one in the afternoon, almost
in front of the house of the victim. Many persons were present;
after he had fallen the assassins poured five bullets into him.
That same day three other senators and two deputies were kidnapped,
but thanks to the scandal which the assassintaion of Field Jurado
caused, they were placed at liberty. Enrique Colunga, Secretary 
of the Interior, confessed his complicity with the kidnappers by
swearing on his word of honor that the kidnappers (kidnapped?)
should be safe in their homes at the end of twenty-four hours,
a thing which happened to the letter.

What was the result of those crimes? Other Cooperative senators 
threatened with the same fate, were present in the Senate, and although they 
voted negatively, the pacts were approved over the bloody body of
Field Jurado. Wilson never would have accepted pacts signed under 
such circumstances.

Crimes followed from then on. Two municipal presidents of the Federal
District have been assasinated , the Director of the paper "Tomorrow"
was assasinated also, Lamadrid, Morales, etc. Every day the press
carries the news of more people who have disappeared because they
cannot say that they have been assasinated by the government. It
is easy to see that Obregon, who began his government over the
corpse of DonVenustiano Carranza, is dragged along by crime, and
that from one he goes to another.

Now it is declared that individual security is suspended for 
anyone who seems suspicious, that is to say, he can kill those
whom he supposed to be enemies of the government.

Yesterday the press published the statement that, in order to

13.

avoid charges of trying to impose Calles on the people it is thought that [**] Obregon might remain in power two years longer; that the Constitution might be changed authorizing the reelection of the President for a single time. How can the Constitution be changed through the will of a single man? The Congress cannot do it for two reasons, first, because the country is at war, and second, because since the revolution beg [*] many deputies have left the City of Mexico, the Chamber [is] without a quorum, and cannot function legally. 

It was also said in the press that the elections for President, Deputies, and Senators, would be carried on very soon, that in order to avoid political scandals etc. there will not be voting booths, that is to say, places for voting will not be installed in public places, but the citizens will go to the political clubs to vote; the government will make a precise register of the citizens, noting their political affiliation.

Under such conditions, who will dare to say that he is against Calles or Obregon? Who will dare to go vote freely if those citizens who are against Calles and Obregon have their individual rights suspended ?[***********************************.]

[*******************************************************************************************] And to what clubs will they go to vote if there are none but Callist clubs?

Such laughing at the Mexican people and such voilation of the law had of the public morals never has been known here; Profirio Diaz did the same thing, but he respected the formulas. Obregon violates the law cynically.

These are the deeds, some of which are known and some of which have been made known through the press, always realizing that the press have been muzzled, that there is censorship of all papers,


14.

that the "Tomorrow" was suppressed, the machinery broken the bibs, and the editor assasenated because he had attacked the political acts of the President.

The papers publish the Executive dismissal of Jose Maria Truchuelo, Judge of the Supreme Court of Justice of the nation, because he was considered an enemy of the government, in spite of the fact that the position of Judge is sacred according to the Constitution. This Judge was discharged because he protested vigorously against the imprisonment of the Governor of Queretaro, ordered by the President. Also it is published that the Executive has decreed that their salaries be not paid to Cooperative Deputies. On what law does the Executive stand that he may attack in such an arbitrary manner the rights and the existence of two supreme powers independent of the Executive, as the Legislative Power and the Judicial power are? The Executive should submit to them, and with them that power forms part of the[*] government of this nation.

It is easily seen how different the Mexican situation and the attitude of General Obregon are as painted by Habermann and his friends and as described by an impartial voice. Only the most salient of the arbitrary policies of the Executive have been mentioned; many details have been left out which are no less criminal than those mentioned.

Only one thing more should be said in order that the popular [*] sentiment may be understood. General Calles enjoyed in Sonora an enormous popularity before he was governor of that state. Mr. de la Huerta was Governor of the same state twice, before and after General Calles. The state of Sonora is actually frankly for De la Huerta, and against Calles. Is this because Calles satisfied the progressive desires of the state? Is it because De la Huerta showed conservative tendencies when he was governor? Surely not.

15.
Obregon, Morones, Habermann and their friends say that De la Huerta
is a conservative. How is it, then, that Morones, Habermann, and the
other "non vivants" or perhaps the "yellow leaders, aid Calles, and
the groups of red laborers lean toward de la Huerta?
It is well known that Morones is the Gompers of Mexico, and
that the reds are similar to the I.W.W. Which are the most radical?
Ask any Mexican laborer who Morones is, and he will tell you that
he was a poor laborer before he became leader, and that now he is
a bourgeois on account of his wealth and the way he uses it, and a faithful servant of this
government from which he hopes to obtain great personal gain.
The honored and impartial reader will know how to place these
deeds in their rightful order, and how to decide concerning the men
who have taken part in them.
Mexico, March 1924, Mexico, D.F.


[*CCC
at WH Suff hearing
Jan 9 /19*]

Any political party which becomes great enough to get national power or any
political party that writes important history in a country is led by statesmen.
The statesman is the man who recognizes the strength in the people and leads
up to it; the politician is the man who recognizes the weakness of the people
and attempts to profit from that. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties
of our country have had such men. One such was buried yesterday and [that]
whatever others may think of him, the whole world acknowledges that he was
a very great man. Another great man is now our President. These two men
were not very good friends; they did not admire each other very much. President
Wilson's party did not admire Theodore Roosevelt and Roosevelt's Party does
not admire President Wilson, but an analysis of their attitude reveals the
fact that they both recognized tremendous strength of leadership in the other
and it is a curious thing that these men being so different in most ways yet
had some things in common. Roosevelt came forward into conspicuous political
life as Commissioner of the Police in New York and as Commissioner of Civil
Service and in both cases he made a reputation by fighting corruption in
political life and President Wilson came forward also into public notice
in his famous fight against Jim Nugent and corrupt politics in New Jersey.
Both of them were 100 per cent. American and both believes in the high ideals
of Americanism, and this is what these two men have said:

Whenever President Wilson speaks we may always be proud that it is
the voice of the scholar, the voice of calm conviction. Theodore Roosevelt
always made me think of a western cyclone. Next month in the Metropolitan
Magazine will appear an article which was written only a few days before he
died and in that article are these words which is the voice of the cyclone:

If we were to go further to learn what great men are thinking, there

-2-

is another man who is ready to rank with these two great men of the world.  
He is the man who brought Great Britain through to victory.  It is his 
Government which gave women the vote and he has just been returned by an 
enormous majority in Great Britain and that is Lloyd George and he said:  

These things have been said by these men within the last five weeks.  
There is mandate enough for any Legislature to take action.


[*1919 
Russia*]

The Situation in Bolshevist Russia from the point of view of Social Morality.

It is nearly two years since the whole of central Russia, the 
so-called Great Russia, is separated from the entire world.  The postal and 
telegraphic communications are interrupted; travellers and newspaper arrive 
only casually and nothing permits us to hope, that things will change 
soon.  The end of the universal war, the signature of peace did not modify 
anything in the state of Russian affairs.  The civil war, of which the unhappy 
Russia is the victim, still continues.  In spite of that, the world 
must know, what is happening there; we must oppose to the tales and to 
the lies of persons interested in them, objective truth, if one may say so, 
the truth that is the result of fact, and not of theories, the result of 
observation of every-day life, and not the result of the reading of decrees 
[of every-day life, and not the result of the reading of decre] and ukases, 
may be beautiful on the paper, but not applied and impossible to be applied.  
As secretary of the League for the Regeneration of Russia (Switzerland) and 
vice-chairman of the Russian Women's Union, I had the opportunity to be well 
informed and [had the] consider it as my strict humane duty to report about 
the tragic situation of the Russian people, exploited during many centuries 
by the tzarist's autocracy, free one moment in March 1917, and since then 
again a victim of a tyrannie, which "at best can only be described as
democracy gone mad", to speak like George Kennan.

We know from irrefutable witnesses such as the Y.M.C.A.'s 
secretaries who took part in the expedition on the Volga in 1918 reported 
in their publication "Rural manhood" January 1919, from the English White 
Book presented to Parliament by command of his Majesty, from many others 
too long to report, from the avowals of the bolsheviks themselves published 
in their papers, from which I composed a pamphlet, edited by the League for 
the regeneration of Russia, under the title of "What are the Bolskeviks 
doing", we know, that the whole country is in a desperate economical situation.  
Let us hear how an Englishman, who left Russia this Spring speaks 

-2-
about it: "As you walk about Petrograd you never see anyone laugh or
smile. Men and women are like shaddows, and little children so wasted,
that they seem to be all eyes" (Keeling, Bolshevism as it is).
Provisions are rare; for a lot of people there are none.
Nothing astonishing, that a great many persons try to find means of existence
by theft, robbery, speculation, assassination and prostitution.
In reality the last is the only way open to many women, who, not able to 
earn their living, factories, shops, schools, being shut and ruined, take
this means. For women in charge of a family the situation is most tragic.
Numerous are the wives of physicians, officers, barristers, obliged to become
prostitutes, to be able to buy a little food for their hungry children.
The Russian publiciste Persky reports the case of the widow
of an important industrial, who lived thus a while month, saved her two
children from death by hunger, but finally became mad. We have ourselves
seen a recent letter from a Swiss lady, who has been a governess in Petrograd
for several years in a rich Russian family. This letter, which was
addressed to her parents in Renens near Lausanne related the following facts:
That the men of this family, since the Bolshevik reign had all disappeared,
killed as officers or forced to serve in the red army. The five young 
ladies, after having been deprived as bourgeoises of all they had, furniture,
linen, silver, money etc. succeeded in getting into a village near 
Petrograd, where peasants of their former property, who were farming their
land, received them and gave them food for a few months. But a raid of red
soldiers soon came, upset everything in the village, and the five young
girls, with their swiss governess-friend were obliged to return to Petrograd.
They tried everything to get a living, seeking for lessons, sowing, selling
in the streets. Finally in the greatest misery, dying of hunger, they went
to the commissariats and fetched "tickets", with which to give themselves up
to the soldiers in the barracks. By prostitution alone all the remained of


-3-
that family was unable to live.
A detail to be notified: It will be seen from our documents
that the former prostitutes who generally were recruited from the lower
classes of the population are now provided with some more or less important
posts in the numerous "sovietists" administrations. In exchange, the women
and young girls of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectual classes find in
the prostitution their only means for existence. Do not let us conclude 
that the others have renounced because of this exercising their former profession.
For the bolshevist prostitution is not a "vice" and as we shall
see farther, the most absolute dissoluteness is purposely taught to the
coming generations. The wheel of fortune has turned: before the proletariat
had to furnish even the "material for pleasure" to the bourgeois capitalists,
now the same proletariat through their worse specimen having become newly
rich makes use and abuse of its former masters. At the beginning of the
bolshevist regime there has been something like a struggle against prostitution,
by several means, as arbitrary, as inefficacious; in Moscow for
instance, night raids were ordered and women taken in this raid imprisoned.
In Petrograd a decree of Mrs. Steinberg-Jakovlevy was in force some time,
according to which every public woman arrested in the street could be shot
down. To judge from their own news, (Izvestia, from June 12) the bolsheviks
complain that "the front swarms with women whom it is impossible to remove
even by the most energetic measures; cases of debauchery and disgusting
deprivity are frequent."
Parallely with this dreadful social evil, the professional
prostitution, the consented one so to say, there is still worse: the forced,
obligatory prostitution, as also the innumerable violences committed on
women under the pretext of class struggle, of repression of one party against
another, committed thanks to the tolerance and the absolute impunity which is

-4-
accorded in this category to the red soldiers and sailors. The Swedish professor Viksel certifies that the bolsheviks have organized houses of debauches, where women of the high classes have been shut up by force; General Poole in a telegram concerning central Russia and published in the English White Book says: "There is evidence to show that commissariats of free love have been established in several towns and respectable women flogged for refusing to yield. Decree for nationalization of women has been put onto force, and several experiments made to nationalize children." We know farther that in this commissariats of free love (tickets) for use of women were distributed. The commissaries in charge of this distribution forced themselves by order of superiors or by personal caprice to deliver to a man of the people for instance a ticket for the use of a woman of the high society, and vice-versa, a man possessing a former passport of nobility, although if actually a bolshevik, only obtained a ticket giving him the right of using a woman from the lower people. 
The "Izvestia" of Vladimir (an official sovietist paper) confirms those facts and gives even some technical details. The archbishop of Omsk in a message to the Pope, to the archbishops of Paris, London and New York and to others patriarch says the following: "The bolsheviks are committing religious infamies, proclaiming the socialisation of women, professing the licentiousness of morals." Madame Ebba de Hueck, wife of the former Russian charge d'affaires to the Belgian government in Havre, wrote to Madame Juliette Carton de Wiart speaking of the situation in sovietist Russia in January 1919: "This new measure, by which the bolsheviks put the finishing touch on their work of depravity and ruin, is equivalent to the general and obligatory prostitution of all young women in Russia. Can the civilised world remain indifferent, when such horrors are taking place?"
Lately we learned from a Danish physician, Dr. Berensted, returned from Kieff, that in this town and in Jitomir the sovietist power has 


-5-
proclaimed by decree published in all the newspaper of Kieff that "socialisation" of women, between eighteen and forty years, later till thirty five. Married women having their husband in a cercle of twenty five km. pregnant women and those who nurse, are dispensed. All the others are obliged to present themselves for three hours weekly sexual labour. The men and the women pass a medical examination at every rendezvous; two physicians who refused collectively to do this work it was imposed by hard labour, under pain of being shot.
After all that has been said could people as Dr. John Rickmann of the English society of Friends' War victims' Relief Committee, and many others deny that this measure "Nationalisation" or better "Socialisation" of women by the bolsheviks did exist, and tell us, that there is confusion between it and easy marriage, and divorce. One is really stuperfied on account of the cynicism that there is to apply the name of marriage to union of three hours as it was in Kieff, of even of three weeks as in Toula, Valdimir, certain towns of Volga, Kouznetsks, for instance, and also to speak of divorce, when it is consecrated by a red soldier on the place for the price of thirty or sixty kopecks.
The bolshevist paper "Krasnayn Gazeta" tells us that a decree of Commissary Rogatine of Vladimir approved by the local Council of Worldmen and Soldiers, has suspended the nationlisation of women, and duly put into force a committee of women to report on the results of this measure. The same article says: "It is to be feared that in Vladimir province this led to a lamentable confusion in juridical notions of the inviolability of persons. A few days after the soviets' decree which women unanimously ignored two outsiders known to nobody arrived in the town and seized the tow daughters of a non-bourgeois comrade, declaring that they had chosen them as wives, and that the daughters. without any ceremony must submit, as they had not observed the registration rule, comrades Yablonovsky and Curiakain who set

-6-
as judges in this claim, decided that the girls must submit. The girls were 
carried off and have not been seen since. This was done in the name of
nationalisation of women. Enthusiaste for nationalisation, naturally all
males, raid whole villages, corral the young girls, and demand proof that
they are not over eighteen. As this proof is very hard to give, many of the 
girls are carried off, and there have neem suicides and murders as a result.
In the town of Kovrov a regular campaign, unparalleled since the Trojan war,
was waged between the vengeful relatives of an abducted girl and her persecutors.
    In this town the register of nationalised women was opened on
December 1 last, but up to February 9 only two women- both over forty- and
neither of whom had ever been married, register themselves as willing to
accept the first husband the State sent along.
                                             *
                                         *        *
              Besides this prostitution decreed in certain localities, we
 can site innumerable cases of violence committed to women. In Theodosia
at the beginning of the bolshevist era, red sailors were dealing in the white
slave trade selling women that they had brought from the Caucasus at 25 Rbl.
a head. This foot, at the time, provoked violent protestation from the now
 bolshevisant Maxime Gorky in his paper "Novia Jizn". - At Ekaterinodar, 
where in February 1916 there was no officially published decree the red guards in 
the presence of a bolshevist commissary visiting a college of young girls
during class hours, chose several of the most beautiful among the pupils and
 carried them off sobbing. They were seen no more. In Mourzillovkn, near
Briansk the 16 Septembre 1916, the comrade Gregoire Savlief received order 
from the local soviet to requisition for the needs of the artillery division
and to deliver to the barracks sixty women and young girls from the bourgeoisie.
In Kouksh, 1 March 1919, whilst this town was in bolshevik occupation women 
from 16 to 50 were mobilised for work and to "satisfy the needs of the pride

-7- 
and flower of the Revolution." In Moscow at the commencement of 1919 
the swiss clergyman Mr. B. who since then returned to Lausanne assisted 
at a raid in the streets at the close of theaters and cinemas. A group 
of people was surrounded by red soldiers and sailors; men and old women 
were put aside, the others were taken to the barracks. Some days later
there were thrown on the pavement. Many lost their reason, others threw 
themselves in the river.
               The special correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle" reports 
from the front of the volunteer army of Denikino, that during their retreat
(July 1919) the bolsheviks left all on the place and carried away only the
 women. In their language of "thiefs" they called this "nationalisation." 
The railway employers of the stations occupied by the troops of Danikine,
confirm everywhere the fact of this rape of women and give a lot of horrible
details. A peasant woman taken prisoner with a red regime questioned by
an English officer related that she was taken away from her husband by the 
reds; when complaining to a commissary about the violence to which she was
subject, she had from him the answer: "You are nationalised and thus the
property of the soldiers." In Maryoupol soon before the evacuation of this
town, the bolshevik nationalised all the women of the bourgeoisie, who were surrounded and taken away by the soldiers.
                                 The Russian Liberation Committee in London has published the
text of an order of socialization of women and the French paper, "Excelsior" 
(August 27, 1919) gives a photographic reproduction.
                                 Countess Sophie Panine, this wonderful women, who resisted with
so much courage the brutal bolshevicks, has transmitted to us a leaflet published
by the "Society of Propaganda" in Ekaterinodar.
                                     Socialization of Women
                           While staying in habited regions the bolsheviks have committed 
violence upon all women they could get hold of under the pretense of
"socialization."


-8-
          In the village of Kondracheff, they have violated Cossack
women- Mrs.Ponomareff, Anisia Dionine, and many others. At Lougansk, the
widow Masiakine, 52 years old, Eudoxie Leontachenkoff, Kourbordine, etc., -
one of them was violated by ten of the Red Guards.
                      This information is extracted from the protocol where was 
listed the testimony several Cossacks and their names are published in
the book issued by the "Kroug of Don" under title "Cruel Lessons."
                            This enumeration is far from being complete, but confirming 
the testimony of the same people, the bolsheviki violated not only grown-up 
women, but also little girls, saying, that it was necessary to infuse them 
communiste blood. (Donskie Viedomosti, March 23, 1919, No. 70.)
                             The refugees from the Government of Saratoff state the same
 facts about the mass violation of women, adolescents and children, committed 
under the pretense of "Socialization."
                               Citizens, what does this "socialization" mean? What good, 
what happiness does it bring you? It means that neither sister, nor daughter,
 nor wife, nor fiancee may remain pure. 
                               Our country, the holy Russia, is transformed by the bolsheviki 
into a big public house, where every convict, black-guard and villain, where
every man afflicted by ignoble diseases may infect your wife, sister and fiancee.
For you, outcasts of humanity, a similar situation of the Russian woman seems a 
paradise on earth.
                               But you, saintly Russian women, with the help of your brothers, 
husbands and fathers, collect all the [?]orces that are left to you, exhausted as
you are by starvation and horrors that surround you, and with the faith that
God will help you in this saintly and just cause, rescue your health and your 
purity:
                               There is just one way out of it -  down with the violators, down
with the bolsheviki!
                                                          *
                                                    *           *

-8-
                         Let us pass on the chapter of the systematic demoralization
of the young generation. The report S1 of the English White Book gives us
 the following information about the conditions in Moscow schools, in January
1919. Each class has its committee. The objects of those committees are:
1. To control the masters. 2. To arrange about the distribution of food, all
 the boys and girls in the school being given a mid-day meal. This is, as a
matter of fact, the only reason that they go to school at all. Both boys and
 girls are herded together and there is no semblance of morality. The entire
absence of discipline in this connection is having an extremely bad effect on
the coming generation.
                             From a report addressed lately to the Swiss federal Council by
 a Swiss returned from Russia: :The schools are entirely annihilated. Sexual
orgia between the schoolers of the elder classes take place."
                            In the school - type created by Lenine in the former laure 
Serguie Troitzky, the degradation came to such a point that Lenine himself
introduced by decree punishment by weeping.
                             The swiss professor, Mr. E. who continued giving lessons in
Petrograd in the last winter 1919, told us personally with great eloquence,
how the Petrograd schools ceased to be a place of instruction and were transformed 
into a sort of clubs, where the children discuss pele-mele, mid-day
meals, organization of a smoking room, a mixed class of gymnastic, dancing, 
bells, theater, etc. These bells and dancing are however obligatory. Parents
who, wishing to preserve their children from the moral gangreene keep them at
home, are punished by imprisonment. A mother, who paid a visit to her daughter
aged thirteen in the Catherine institute, related afterwards with bitter tears,
that she found her daughter painted, like a bad woman. In the higher classes
of the Obolensky college (boys and girls between seventeen and eighteen) there
were may free marriages. Boy and girls walked about in couples, arm in arm, 
kissing one another openly. In the boarding schools the dormitories are near 
together, sometimes boys and girls sleep next to one another; boys are sent to

-10-
help girls to dress in the morning.
                        What becomes of morality in all this? Not much unfortunately.
But morality is only a bourgeois prejudice.
                                                           *
                                                     *          *
                           In view of the immense extension of prostitution and the general 
open dissolution of moral customs, there is nothing astonishing that the venereal
disease is increased proportionally. On the other hand, physicians and drugs are
rare, in some places one physician for 150 thousands inhabitants in a cercle of
25 Km. (Report of Dr. Hotfield, secretary to the Y.M.C.A.) sometimes bit
totally absent, all anti-venereal struggle is impossible, as long as the responsible
people of this rule are in power. You can easily imagine, that there
exist now-a-day no statistics on this question, but one simple fact is significant.
The bolsheviks acknowledge that Moscow had more than 3 thousands syphilitics
in January, more than 5 thousands in February and more than 11 thousands 
in March 1919. The "Izvestis" publishing this news added that one need not be
 alarmed at this recrudescense, all cases being alight.  For a doctor this needs 
commentary.
                               Other fact: the bad condition of general hygiene contributes
to the propagation of venereal disease. In the report 35 of the English White
book we found the following: In most schools, dining rooms have been opened and
the children are given free meals, and they practically only go to school in 
order to obtain food. But in many places,  owing to the uncleanly and filthy 
manner in which food has been served, these dining rooms have had to be closed.
Within my own knowledge such a dining room in a small town in the Vladimir government 
had to be closed the children having contracted venereal disease through the 
filthy conditions of the utensils used in serving the meals."
                                Many others facts might be sited, But what is striding, in all
the evidence, and particularly in the recitles of eye witnesses returned from
Russia and to whom I have been able to speak myself, is the perfect agreement


-11-
of what they say. Whether it be Petrograd, Moscow, Nijni-Novgorod, Smolensk, 
whether it be businessmen, tradesmen, professors, teachers, clergymen, former 
officers, and their wives. All add unanimously: Russia will surely rise again,
but we shall not be here to see it, for the present rising generation is done
for. Children exist no longer in Russia, pure, simple and open hearted. There
are only unfortunate, vicious, physically sick little wretches and their moral
condition is still worse on account of the public examples of debauchery into
which they are dragged, whether they will or no.
Lausanne August 1919.                           (Signed) Dr. Natalie Wintsch-Maleeff.

[*? addressed ? Carrie Chapman Catt*]                                                                    
[* ? Dec 9/19 Bulgaria]
                                                                                                     
A PROTEST
From the Bulgarian Women's Union against the
Treaty of Peace.

         The Bulgarian women, as all the women in the world, are against war.
Our last war, as also the preceding wars following our liberation, were imposed
upon us by our centuries old ideal -- the union of the Bulgarian nation, partitioned 
by the Berlin Treaty, 1878. The Entente proclaimed the supreme right of free
existence under the sun for the great and small nations. The President of the
United States charmed the world, when with his 14 points extended and affirmed
this right. Small but heroical in its experiences Bulgaria, after delivering her
children from subjection at the expense of rivers of blood, withdrew within
its old frontiers, accepted unconditionally the principles proclaimed by the
Entente and was the first to stretch out a hand for peace in Salonica. As a security 
for the honesty of its action, the Bulgarian government, confiding in
the assurances and the promised protection of the three Great Powers of the 
Entente, compelled more than 100 000 strong soldiers, experienced in war, to
surrender and for the sake of united Bulgaria to submit until further orders.-
         We the women, overwhelmed with blood and tears, were ready to believe,
that a new era of brotherhood between nations had arisen on earth, which
would, with its good news, efface all memory of rifles and guns and all instruments 
of destruction... 
         A whole year has passed since then. Our sons continue to this day to
rest as hostages in the hands of Serbians and Greeks. Many of them, spared from
shot and shell during the five years of war, are leaving their bones to bleach 
under foreign skies. In vain have been the numerous prayers for the return of our

-2-
dear sufferers on the part of mothers, wives and children to the representatives 
of the Entente Powers. Whenever in the midst of mockery and calumny on the
part of our neighbours, a suspicion penetrated our hearts, we invariably remembered 
the high principles of the Entente "for the good and small nations" and 
"the 14 points of Great Wilson".-
Behold after long months of suspense and painful expectation the Treaty 
of Peace is delivered into the hands of the Bulgarian delegates . . . We are
stunned, horrified by the pronounced sentence upon Bulgaria. Bulgaria is not
only deprived fo all the Bulgarian lands repossessed by superhuman efforts -
Macedonia, Thrace and Dobroudja, parts of its own bleeding body, but more,
towns and villages, which have always been Bulgarian, are torn away from her . . .
What a mockery of our faith in the preachings of the Entente !
In our profound grief, we have a presentiment that this sentence does
not lead to peace, but to new surprises and sufferings, and therefore approach
you with our prayer: Hear our dispairing cry against the committed overwhelming
injustice and - in the name of the highest justice, without which durable
peace is not to be thought of or any League of Nations,- receive and support
his our petition !
The Treaty of Peace is a complete contradiction of the proclaimed principles. 
In the face of such decisions of the Versailles Conference, who among
you can feel secure round your hearths? And who will bear the responsibility,
if from the unextinguished ashes thrown into the hearts of so many a new conflagration 
breaks in this world?

Sofia, 24th of September 1919.-              
[*President Julie Malinoff*]
[*Vice President Catherine Raravecoff*]
[*Secretary D. Yvanova*]
[*Conveners of standing Committees*]
[*?*]
[*Elena StojanoriaPh.D.*]
[*Elena Tehacaloff*]
[Jenny ]
[*?*]

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.