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Carroll, Andrew, ed. War Letters. New York: Schribner, 2001.

 

Social Activist Jane Addams Warns President Woodrow Wilson of the Consequences of Preparing for War Instead of Advocating for Peace 
&
Mrs. M. Denkert Implores Jane Addams to Continue Her Antiwar Efforts on Behalf of "Poor Stricken" Mothers Everywhere

 

Shot by a teenaged Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, while `visiting Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand-heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne--assured those who rushed to his aid, "It is nothing." But Ferdinand died only moments later, igniting a diplomatic firestorm that swiftly consumed all of Europe. Austria-Hungary swore retaliation against Serbia for the assassination. Russia owed it would protect Serbia. Germany, allied with Austria-Hungary, declared war n Russia. When German forces marched through Belgium in early August to „` invade France, a Russian ally, Great Britain declared war on Germany. The long standing powder keg of suspicion and animosity between the Central Powers (primarily Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey) and the Allies (including Russia, France, Belgium, Great Britain) had finally exploded. The United States anted no part of it. The war, asserted President Woodrow Wilson, was one "with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us." The vast majority of the entry agreed. But when a German submarine torpedoed the British liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing 128 vacationing Americans, the nation was jolted, if y temporarily, from its apathy. Antiwar activists feared the attack would dash any hopes for a negotiated peace. Jane Addams, the famed social reformer and chairwoman the Woman's Peace Party, was particularly concerned by Wilson's call to increase the production of armaments and double the size of the army to ensure the country's preparedness for war. Addams sternly reminded the president of the potential repercussions his actions both to the world and his own legacy.

October 29, 1915 
To the President of the United States, 
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. President:

Feeling sure that you wish to get from all sources the sense of the American people in regard to great national questions, officers of the Women's Peace Party venture to call to your attention certain views which they have reason to believe are widespread, although finding no adequate expression in the press.

We believe in real defense against real dangers, but not in a preposterous "preparedness" against hypothetic dangers.

If an exhausted Europe could be an increased menace to our rich, resourceful republic, protected by two oceans, it must be a still greater menace to every other nation.

Whatever increase of war preparations we may make would compel poorer nations to imitate us. These preparations would create rivalry, suspicion and taxation in every country.

At this crisis of the world, to establish a "citizen soldiery" and enormously to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us.

It has been the proud hope of American citizens who love their kind, a hope nobly expressed in several of your own messages, that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege not only of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace, but of aiding toward a gradual and proportional lessening of that vast burden of armament which has crushed to poverty the peoples of the old world.

Most important of all, it is obvious that increased war preparations in the United States would tend to disqualify our National Executive from rendering the epochal service which this world crisis offers for the establishment of permanent peace.

Jane Addams

President Wilson assured both Addams, who later received the Nobel Peace Prize, and the rest of the country that he had no intention of seeing the United States mired in the fighting abroad. "He Kept Us Out of War" became his 1916 campaign slogan, and it proved successful; Wilson was reelected. Americans continued to be shocked by news wires reporting the sheer enormity of the carnage overseas. An estimated 19,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day of combat along the Somme River in France. Over 700,000 French and German soldiers were lost at Verdun. The Russians suffered nearly one million casualties during the Brusilov Offensive on the eastern front. And this was all in 1916 alone. The U. S., although firmly behind the Allies in spirit, was by no means unanimous in its support; Irish Americans loathed the British, Russian-American Jews had fled their homeland because of anti-Semitism, and many German Americans still had emotional and often direct family ties to Germany. One German American, Mrs. M. Dunkert, wrote to Jane Addams and begged her not to yield to those who were pressing for war and denigrating Addams's crusade for peace as antipatriotic and futile. Dunkert's sentiments were shared by many American parents, regardless of nationality, terrified of sending their boys to fight in what was increasingly being seen as a never-ending bloodbath.