Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

because we American women are free to work; because the cause of Peace is popular with us; nobody can be criticised; nobody can sacrifice or fear anything who stands for it. Foreign women look to the American women for leadership. They believe we are cleverer than they. They know we have more freedom to work, and they are willing to follow the leadership of American women, as they are not willing to follow the leadership of the women of any other country, because their governments are in entire Peace with ours, and so I say to you that it is the duty of American women to stand as the leaders in this great work of Peace. Let each of us, therefore, become an organized individual peace society, and in the church and in the school and in the home, let us stand for it until we have so aroused the public reason, as Felix Adler called it, that the whole nation shall insist that our government must take the initiative all along the line. We need to stand for more than the mere abolition of war. We need to stand firm for International Peace, but we need to stand for Industrial Peace in order that there shall be the abolition of standing armies in the future, and we women can afford to stand for this. Let us demand its entire abolition in all our education and work. If the 50,000 club women in the one city of New York will take it up, if the women in the churches will take it up, we shall, within two years, have made such a sound in behalf of the cause of Peace that it shall be heard all the way around the world and it will become an established fact before we even dare to dream of it. (Applause.)

MRS. MEAD.

Friends, this lady is not on the program, and she is not going to speak; but I want you to know that this is Fraülein Eckstein, one of the directors of the American Peace Society, and a teacher who is this year spending every spare cent of her income printing and mailing all over the world these petitions to the heads of the nations. I will read this petition and she will be at the rear of the hall with other copies as you go out, and, if you are willing, please take, each one of you, a copy and get as many signatures as possible, and send to her; she plans to go herself to The Hague to present the petitions. It is as follows. (Petition for treaty to refer all difficulties to arbitration read by the Chairman.) Ladies, this is one useful thing that you can easily do.

I now have great pleasure in presenting to you the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, President of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association, and Chairman of the Committee of the International Council of Women. We had hoped to give her more time than any other speaker and regret that she also must be limited to ten minutes.

Women's Responsibility in the Peace Movement

REV. ANNA HOWARD SHAW

Many years ago a woman in our country went forth to battle. She armed herself with a hatchet; she entered one saloon after another, destroying the furniture and making herself a general nuisance to the community. One of the New York papers at once wired Miss Anthony: "Telegraph to the paper your opinion of the action of this woman, and is this what the Women Suffragists of the United States are after?"

Miss Anthony immediately replied: "There are two forms of offense and defense; one is the method of barbarians; the other is the method of civilized men. There are two forms of weapons by which we may defend ourselves; one is the weapon of barbarism; the other is the weapon of civilization. The hatchet is the weapon of barbarism, the ballot the weapon of civilization." (Applause.)

The Association which I represent in this Peace Movement is a Peace Association, because it stands for arbitration; that is all that it means, the right of the people, the whole people, to arbitrate their difficulties at the ballot box, and this association has demanded this form of arbitration from the beginning, in the hands not only of the men but of the women of the nation as well. When the women of the world, when the women of the United States may stand as an integral part of the government of the United States and have power to go to the ballot box and there decide questions of Peace and war, then they will have power accompanied by that form of responsibility which always makes power safe, and the one who holds it conservative in her action.

We have been told from the very beginning of this Congress that women have a tremendous power and force in influencing war and Peace. They have, but there is no more dangerous force in all the world than that exercised by a part of the people who have power and yet who are not held responsible for the manner in which they use it. Though women have had the power to inspire war, to inspire what we call patriotism, which makes men go forth to battle, and though it is the courage of the woman which incites to fight, yet the woman has only the influence to inspire that in which man has already taken the initiative. She can inspire and encourage his action; she cannot control the conditions before or after, nor is she held responsible for the results. If we could only add to the influence of woman the responsibility which would follow her action in active participation of deciding whether there shall be Peace or war, then we would back up the influence of women in this country with a power which would make her conservative and a mighty force for Peace. So we stand in our organization demanding that women shall have the power to sit in the Councils of State and bring into them the woman's thought, the woman's heart, the woman's responsibility, and when this is done then we will have a real, practical force in the women of the country in the interests of Peace; because women will think twice before they vote their sons to death. (Applause.) Women will think twice before they lay upon the nation the terrible burdens which follow war. Women will think twice before they will be the inspiration of a, in many respects, false patriotism.

When the Spanish war was on every other household in our block hung out flags. We did not hang out a single flag from our house. We were questioned in regard to it; I answered: "When the war is over we will raise the flag." I believe the time when the flag should be raised, the time when the flag should inspire patriotism, is not in time of war, but in time of Peace, in order that there may be no war.

We have a false idea of patriotism which has influenced many of our people. "My country right or wrong"-how many of us heard that expression two years ago! One man said: "The right kind of patriotism is to stand by your country under all conditions, 'my country right or wrong." I said to him: "A man who could make such an utterance as that has never known the first principles of patriotism." A real patriot says: "My country if she is right, but if she is wrong, then by every power of my being will I seek to make her right."

"I prefer my family to myself, I prefer my country to my family, but I prefer humanity to my family," is the highest form of patriotism, or that of the Persian sage, who said: "Think not thou art a patriot when thou canst say, 'I love my country only,' but rather know that thou dost not understand what patriotism is until thou canst say, 'I love my kind.' "

That form of patriotism will never enter into the hearts of the people of a nation until the mothers of the nation, the teachers of the nation (seven-tenths of whom are women) shall become an integral part of its life and a factor in determining Peace or war, between the nation in which they may live and the nations beyond their portals. Therefore I claim that if our association is not a Peace Association it is at least a very close relation to a Peace Association, for it is an arbitration society.

MRS. MEAD.

We have now as our last speaker Miss Sevasti N. Gallispéri, representing the Department of Education of Greece. She was the first woman to receive the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the University of Athens. With the degree she went to the Sorbonne in Paris, taking the degree of License-ès Lettres, the only woman among 127 men competitors and standing eighteenth among the thirty-nine that succeeded in getting the degree. Upon her return to Athens the Parliament of Greece gave her the position of Inspector of Public Schools and this position she has held for ten years without salary. She now comes to this country commissioned by the Minister of Education to study our educational methods. I have great pleasure in introducing Miss Callispéri.

I am very sorry that we have not a half hour longer to give to all the people who would like to speak. I am specially sorry that we have not time to hear President Martha Gielow of the Southern Educational Association, who asks for three minutes, but we have not one moment to spare, as the other meeting in Carnegie Hall opens in ten minutes. We must have, however, one minute to give Mrs. May Wright Sewall about the Jamestown Exposition.

The Symbols of Peace

MISS SEVASTE N. CALLISPERI

DEAR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: No words can tell you how thankful I am to God who brought me to America, where I see in its best so much of the best that my Greek ancestors had; and how grateful I am to my parents-both gone-who by the education they gave me are the cause of the happiness I feel to-day, because I can address such an audience, and because the voice of an Athenian is heard in the Tabernacle Church. It seems to me of good omen that all we American women and foreigners meet in a church of this name, being sure that as the Laws of Moses were kept in the Tabernacle, so the words that will resound in this Tabernacle Church, and our oath to Peace, that we certainly all give now, will be faithfully kept in the Tabernacle of woman's heart.

Looking on so many calm, bright and intelligent faces shining with inner Peace in daily life, and with the fervent desire to bring Peace among the nations, we may be proud to be women. Now are realized the worlds of Paul:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

Two great civilizations full of divine spirit, Judaism in which the founder of our religion chose to become incarnate, and Hellenism through which was extended all that was good in an incomparable measure; the one at the restoration of nature after the deluge, the other in picturing the victory over warlike force, both of those civilizations have chosen our sex to be messengers of Peace, and both Minerva and the Dove brought to humanity the same emblem, the olive leaf, which is characteristic of the life which religion and philosophy-that is the experience of centuries-wish humanity to live.

As the wild bird that brought in her mouth to Noah's Ark the leaf of the olive tree, as a sign of the end of the deluge, is considered to belong to our sex, so the Deity that vanquished Neptune, who had disputed with her the possession of Attica, by bringing forth that beautiful and proud animal which bears man fearlessly to the war, and dies with him like a faithful friend, that Deity I say, who took hold of its reins and checked its

« AnteriorContinuar »