OUTBREAK OF WAR
A Mediation Appeal signed by Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Chrystal Macmillan on behalf of no fewer than twelve million suffragist women, was delivered to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and all the relevant Ambassadors in London on Friday 31 July 1914. Meanwhile, Russia, Germany and France began mobilising.
International Manifesto of Women, July 1914
We, the women of the world, view with apprehension and dismay the present situation in Europe, which threatens to involve one continent, if not the whole world, in the disasters and the horrors of war…. We women of twenty-six countries, having banded ourselves together in the International Women's Suffrage Alliance with the object of obtaining political means of sharing with men the power which shapes the fate of nations, appeal to you to leave untried no method of conciliation or arbitration for arranging international differences which may help to avert deluging half the civilised world in blood.
A public rally to urge the UK Government to remain neutral and to mediate between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was held on the evening of Tuesday 4 August 1914 in the Kingsway Hall, London. At the close of the rally a deputation of women took the two resolutions that had been agreed at the rally to 10 Downing Street. However, within the hour war was declared.
As 1914 progressed into December, Emily Hobhouse penned an Open Christmas Letter to the Women of Germany and Austria. It was signed by over 100 women suffragists, many of whom became members of the Women’s International League (WIL). The letter was published in the January 1915 issue of Jus Suffragii, the journal of the International Women Suffrage Alliance (IWSA).
CHRYSTAL MACMILLAN AND KATHLEEN COURTNEY GO TO THE HAGUE
Chrystal Macmillan (1872-1937)
With the onset of war in August 1914, the women of the German section of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) felt that they had no alternative but to cancel the International Congress which had been due to meet in Berlin in June 1915. In response, Aletta Jacobs wrote on behalf of the Dutch national committee to other national suffrage organisations in November 1914, suggesting that the Congress could be held in Holland which was a neutral country
‘In these dreadful times in which so much hate has been spread among different nations, the women have to show that we at least retain our solidarity and that we are able to maintain mutual friendship’.
The following month, Chrystal Macmillan wrote to all 26 suffrage societies in the Alliance urging them to agree to meet in Holland to ‘discuss the principles on which peace should be made and, if so, to act internationally’.
She made three suggestions
- the IWSA could have its regular convention with a business meeting afterwards:
- the IWSA could call a convention attended by different women’s organisations: or
- a conference could be summoned by individual women.
Each national suffrage committee discussed and voted on whether to hold the international meeting in Holland. The UK committee of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), meeting in London, voted that an international women’s business congress should be organized by IWSA in 1915. This resolution was carried with only two members opposed.
One of those who opposed was the President, Millicent Fawcett on the grounds that women are ‘as subject as men to national prepossessions and susceptibilities…..we should then run the risk of the scandal of a PEACE conference disturbed and perhaps broken by violent quarrels.’ [Wiltsher 1985] But she was probably influenced by a letter from Lord Robert Cecil in when he threatened to withdraw his support for the suffrage campaign if the women continued to talk about peace.
In practice, Mrs Fawcett’s view reflected the view of many suffragists: by March 1915, the IWSA committee had voted by 11 to 6 that the IWSA would not call the conference.
In the meantime those women who wanted a meeting were using Chrystal’s third suggestion – to call a meeting of individual women. In February 1915 Dr Aletta Jacobs called a preliminary meeting at The Hague. Women from Belgium, Britain, Germany and Holland sat down to plan. The British women who attended were Miss Chrystal Macmillan, Miss T W Wilson, Miss K D Courtney, Miss C Marshall and Miss E M Leaf.
The British women came back from Holland full of enthusiasm. ‘Hundreds of women in Great Britain were convinced that their work lay not only in the relief of physical distress and suffering, but that upon them, as women and non-combatants, fell especially the duty of preparing the way for better understanding and lasting peace between the nations.’ (Toward Permanent Peace 1915 p6).
Miss Chrystal Macmillan returned to Holland at the beginning of April to assist the Dutch committee in making arrangements for the Congress. During the Congress, she acted as Chair of the Resolutions Committee at the Congress and was elected secretary of the new organisation International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace. She was one of five delegates elected to visit the Heads of State in Europe and America to urge the political leaders to consider mediation to end the war. She compiled and edited the Report of the Congress 1915.
Kathleen Courtney (1878-1974)
Kathleen Courtney was one of the NUWSS executive committee who resigned when Millicent Fawcett ruled that NUWSS would not send delegates to the International Women’s Peace Congress at the Hague in April 1915.
She was one of the British women who met with the Dutch women in February 1915 to plan for the Congress and travelled to The Hague early in April to work with the Dutch committee on the organisation for the Congress.
The new organisation formed at the Congress was the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace; Kathleen Courtney was elected chairman of the British section which was called the Women’s International League.
In an article reporting back on her time at The Hague she wrote “The Women’s International Congress does not claim to have invented a new means for preventing war: it does not claim to have put forward any startling or original theory. It does claim to have been a gathering of women of many countries, which proved that, even in time of war, the solidarity of women will hold fast; it does claim to have shown that women of different countries can hold out the hand of friendship to each other in spite of the hatred and bloodshed under which most international ties seem submerged. It claims, to, to have shown that, while women have a special point of view on the subject of war, and while its wastefulness of human life must appeal to them with particular emphasis, they can, at the same time make their own contribution to the work and ideals of constructive peace.’ Towards Permanent Peace September 1915
[In 1916 Kathleen Courtney also went to Salonika and Baxtia to carry out work with the Serbian Relief Fund for which she was later decorated by the Serbian government. After the war, Courtney helped her friend, Dr Hilda Clark, at the Friends’ Relief Mission in Vienna, and also travelled to the Balkans and Poland.
In 1920s she became the president of the British Section of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, and organiser of the Women’s Pilgrimage for Peace of 1926. Courtney was also active in the international effort that culminated in the presentation of a petition signed by several millions to the Disarmament Conference of 1932.
The HOME SECRETARY THWARTS WOMEN’S TRAVEL PLANS
British women from a wide range of organisations were interested in being delegates to the Congress. However, only 25 of the 180 British delegates were granted passports. The women attempted to get the last boat from Tilbury but all merchant shipping in the North Sea and the Channel was suspended on 27 April 1915 by order of the British Government. Chrysal Macmillan and Kathleen Courtney, already in Holland, and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, who travelled to The Hague with the USA delegation, were the only three British women to reach the Congress
The popular press in Britain condemned the ‘blundering Englishwomen’ and ‘babblers’ and called into question the loyalty of these ‘Pro-Hun Peacettes ‘
And from the Prime Minister of the land:
“THE futile pacifists whose whispers are like the twittering of sparrows while storms and tempests shake the world to its foundations,”—thus Herbert Asquith, prime minister of England, has mocked the little groups, of English people who, swirled in the turmoil of world hate, are clinging to old ties of international friendship and good will.” – Mary Chamberlain 1915 ‘Peace Currents Beneath War Turmoil in England’, The Survey Vol 34, No 23 September 4, 1915, p501
List of the women who were granted passports
British Committee of the Women’s International Congress (from ‘Towards Permanent Peace: A Record of the Women’s International Congress‘, June 1915)
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF WOMEN, 1915
Dr Aletta Jacobs of Holland wanted to show that the women of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) could continue to work together. She wrote in Jus Suffragii in December 1914, “In these dreadful times, in which so much hate has been spread among different nations, the women have to show that we at least retain our solidarity, and that we are able to maintain mutual friendship.
“We women of the Netherlands, living in a neutral country, accessible to the women of all other nations, therefore take it upon ourselves the responsibility of calling together such an International Congress of Women.”
The Dutch women formed a committee, and five British women took part in the initial meeting. Those women were:
- Chrystal Macmillan
- Catherine Marshall
- Miss T.W. Wilson
- Kathleen Courtney
- Miss E.M. Leaf
The committee then issued invitations to suffrage organisations and individual women to an International Congress of Women to be held at The Hague, 28 April – 1 May 1915.
The women had a three day programme of debates and discussions, some in public, some in committee. Speeches were short, delivered in English, French and German. The Congress adopted the name International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) and reached agreement on twenty resolutions, which still resonate with women today.
The envoys
The Congress elected an international team of five Envoys who travelled back and forward across war-torn Europe and to USA during the summer months of 1915, visiting 14 belligerent and neutral countries, and meeting with 24 influential leaders: Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, Presidents, the King of Norway and the Pope. In October a Manifesto, addressed to the Governments of Europe and the President of the United States, was published explaining the mission of the Envoys was to place before belligerent and neutrals alike a proposal for a conference of neutral nations as an agency of continuous mediation for the settlement of war. Each statesman had declared himself sympathetic. But not one leader would take the first step and the war continued unabate
We went into the office of another high official, a large grizzled, formidable man. When we had finished our presentation and he said nothing, I remarked, “It perhaps seems to you very foolish that women should go about in this way; but after all, the world itself is so strange in this war situation that our mission may be no more strange nor foolish than the rest. He banged his fist on the table. “Foolish?” he said. “Not at all. These are the first sensible words that have been uttered in this room for ten months”.
INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF WOMEN FOR PERMANENT PEACE
At its first general meeting, October 1915, women from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales formed a Committee to support the work of the International Committee and adopted the title ‘Women’s International League’ (WIL). During its first year, WIL organised weekly study meetings, public events, conferences and debates. In the year membership grew to 2,458 women in 34 branches across England and also in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Midlothian. WIL had an office, staff and paid organisers. As well as its own work which was focused on propaganda and educational campaigns, WIL affiliated to the National Peace Council and worked with other organisations on committees for Free Trade, Adult Suffrage and Peace Negotiations.
In spite of all the restrictions of the war WIL achieved a lot; its Literature sub-committee produced numerous pamphlets and periodicals and leaflets. It sold 5,500 copies of a leaflet ’Women’s Case against Conscription’ and 2,000 copies of ‘Why not Negotiate’.
WIL organised, a public meeting on 16 December 1915 “To present the Women’s Case against Conscription”. Following the formation of NCF in December 1915 Catherine Marshall attended the first convention of the NCF as a WIL delegate and gradually her energies went into the pressing work of the NCF. She took over Clifford Allen’s work as Secretary when he was imprisoned.
The League’s position on conscription was made clear in the resolution sent in February 1916 to Prime Minister Asquith, Sir John Simon, Philip Snowden, the press and ICWPP secretaries across the world.
‘WIL holds that Conscription introduces militarism in its most pernicious form, endangers industrial liberty, and is the gravest infringement of the rights of conscience and of the liberty of the subject….and it resolves to work in every legal way possible for the repeal and against the extension of the Military Services Act’.
The processing and treatment of Conscientious Objector’s was also a concern of WIL and in May, 1916 forwarded to the Government a resolution urging ’strongly that men who have claimed exemption from military service on conscientious grounds, and have been refused, should not be deemed to be soldiers, but should be left in the hands of the Civil Authority.’
As the war proceeded public attitude gradually changed and during 1916 anti-militarism agitation started to include more people and locations. Helena Swanwick addressed crowds of 2,000 in Cardiff. Ethel Snowden recorded that in less than a year she addressed 133 public meetings with an average attendance of 1,000 people all agreeing to a petition for a negotiated peace. In the Home Office file “Anti-recruitment and peace propaganda”, which listed 115 peace groups in the UK, the British ICWPP section (WIL) is marked as one of the most prolific at distributing literature.
Helen Crawfurd, who with Agnes Dollan, had set up the Glasgow Branch of WIL in late 1915 and went on to establish the Women’s Peace Crusade to take a more militant and socialist stance to anti-militarism. A crowd of 5,000 attended the Women’s Peace Crusade Demonstration on 23rd July 1916 in Glasgow. That year Helen Crawfurd was appointed WIL’s Scottish organiser recruiting new members and setting up a Branch in Aberdeen. Across Britain membership continued to rise and by October 1917 was 3,576 members in 42 branches.
CRITICISING THE VERSAILLES TREATY, 1919
Following the armistice the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) met in Zürich in May 1919. On the first day of the Congress, the Treaty of Versailles was published. The women sent five envoys to Paris to convey to the statesmen their dismay at the Terms of the Treaty stating that it would
‘…deny the principles of self-determination, recognise the right of victors to the spoils of war and create all over Europe discords and animosities which can only lead to future wars.’
The British delegation of twenty-five included Catherine Marshall, Secretary of the Section, Mary Sheepshanks, Ethel Snowden, Helena Swanwick and Ellen Wilkinson. With the formalisation of a constitution at the Zürich Congress, the international women’s peace movement which grew out of the Congress at The Hague in 1915 established itself as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Second International Congress of Women Zürich 1919 was the first organisation to critique the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
‘This International Congress of women expresses its deep regret that the terms of peace proposed at Versailles should so seriously violate the principles upon which alone a just and lasting peace can be secured …..
By guaranteeing the fruits of the secret treaties to the conquerors, the terms of peace
- tacitly sanction secret diplomacy,
- deny the principles of self-determination,
- recognise the right of victors to the spoils of war
- create all over Europe discords and animosities which can only lead to future wars.’
