It was felt desirable after the Armistice to hold a second conference of the League in order to gather up the broken strands of international friendship and activity. During the League of Nations Conference in Berne a joint meeting of the women delegates and the officers of the Swiss branch of the Women’s International League was held to discuss the possibility of holding the Conference in Switzerland. The Swiss women were willing if the Swiss authorities would permit it and if help could be given them with the organization. I wired to Mrs. Swanwick, the British President, and satisfactory promises of help having been received, it was agreed that the Conference should be held in Zurich in June of 1919. All Europe was despairing of the Peace Treaty not yet published, and the delays were felt increasingly to be full of bad omen. Our Conference opened in brilliant sunshine amidst the gloomiest of fears.
Zurich is, like all Swiss cities, a model of bright cleanliness, its streets filled with flowers in the summer, its surroundings of wood and mountains a physical glory and a spiritual delight. And to add to it all there is the wonderful lake—truly a city for inspiration, if inspiration is anywhere to be felt in times like these.
I travelled in advance of my fellow-delegates, having preliminary business in Berne. During the previous Conference many lonely people, unable to reach their friends, had given me commissions in Paris and London, and I felt obliged to return to report the results. For example: I was writing a letter in the lounge of the Belle Vue Hotel when a beautiful little girl of twelve, with long fair hair and pink cheeks, came and spoke to me in perfect English. I was informed that she was a German child and that she enjoyed a distinguished name—von Kleist. I discovered later that she had a beautiful American mother, which accounted for her English, and that her father, Major von Kleist, was a prisoner of war in England. In reply to a wistful question I offered to see the father and convey greetings from the mother and child. The British authorities at home were as reasonable and generous as I have usually found them in all personal relationships, and I received permission to visit Major von Kleist in Skipton internment camp. He was glad to see someone who had so recently seen his wife and daughter, and who could testify from sight to their health and well-being.
On another occasion came two cultivated Jews from Czernowitz who had a mission to the Jewish Commissioners to the Paris Peace Conference. They could not get their visa and were in great trouble. The Zionist case would suffer if its supporters could not be heard. Would I help them by conveying their written statement to Paris? I knew Rabbi Wise, the Chief Commissioner, and engaged to take these papers to him. On reaching Paris I discovered that Rabbi Wise had returned to America, but delivered the document to his able substitute.
Then there were those who were working for the Siberian prisoners. Terrible stories were told of the sufferings of these wretched men—become nobody’s concern with the withdrawal of Russia from the war and the anarchy consequent upon the Revolution there. No fewer than a quarter of a million, chiefly Austrians and Hungarians, were left to starve and die in internment camps in conditions which beggar description. Some joined the Bolsheviks. Some escaped and died on the way home. Some were told to go, and fought, begged, stole their way to the Polish frontier, only to be told they could go no farther. A few, of a stronger breed, reached home in rags, to tell harrowing stories of incredible suffering. The Allies were petitioned to help with money and ships. They were begged to intercede with the Poles to allow the wretched men under proper control to cross the frontier. It was sought to get ships at Vladivostock to take them round the other way. The Hungarian Red Cross had a petition for President Wilson. Would I take it? I agreed to do so, and placed it in the hands of Colonel House. The men left alive have since been repatriated by the League of Nations, through the efforts of Dr. Nansen.
There were other and less important matters to report: The delivery of letters from Baron Szilassy and his sister to their friends in Huddersfield. Baron Szilassy was the newly appointed Hungarian Minister in Berne, and his sister is a fresh, good-natured girl, English in type. Both spoke excellent English.
So I travelled by Berne en route for Zurich, happy to be the bearer of many kind messages to lonely and miserable people. When I arrived in Zurich most of the British delegates had not arrived owing to passport troubles; but they appeared before the Conference began.
Mrs. Swanwick, the President of the British branch of the Women’s International League, is one of the most commanding personalities of the women’s movement. She is slender and fair, with a delightful boyish mop of pale gold hair which curls up at the ends, and sky blue eyes. She is a person of quite extraordinary intellectual power, a little lacking in tenderness to those of lesser calibre. She finds it extremely difficult to obey the scriptural injunction to “suffer fools gladly.” She is apt to take strong prejudices against people, which is annoying to herself, since it is inconsistent with her own standard of intellect and the conduct she demands of other people; but she has very good judgment in most affairs, and I should not be surprised to discover that in her prejudices she is generally right. Her courage, both physical and moral, is of the very first order and beyond all praise. She is very delicate and yet contrives to do the work of three people. And like many another, she staked everything except her self-respect when she took a public stand against the ignorant hatreds of the war. She is full of artistic appreciation, hates cant and humbug, and is devoted to practical things and persons. She is a very consistent and intrepid feminist, but happily devoid of the anti-man bias which is the mark of the feminist fool!
At the first session of the Conference, tender-hearted Isabella Ford flitted from one woman to another, busying herself in particular with the frail and underfed women from the ex-enemy lands, saying here and there the comforting helpful word to lonely souls inclined to a half-bitterness. There was one pathetic little creature from Vienna, since dead from privation, whose poor hands and face were a mass of festering sores left by the cold and under-nourishment of the previous winter. She was so happy to be there, and, like a little bird, hopped cheerily about the room, revelling in her reunion with old friends; but I heard privately that even in Switzerland, where food abounded, she was not getting enough to eat. The exchange told so heavily against her that practically all her money went to pay for her room and the morning coffee, and she was sitting all day without food. I engaged the interest of some of the more prosperous women, and believe that they were able by the exercise of tact to improve the circumstances of this brave little woman.