“To American Women, Friends of Humanity and Peace!
“Friends:—May I appeal to you in the name of Humanity, on behalf of the children of Europe, before whom suffering or death has already taken place, and whose future is fraught with pain? In you lies our hope of help for them, for you are free to speak and act.
“Will you not come to our troubled world, unite with the women of other neutral lands and initiate a crusade—a real ‘holy’ war, fought with the swords of the Spirit?
“Appalling as is this massacre of the manhood of Europe, that is not the worst. As long as men adopt barbaric methods of settling disputes they must abide by the consequences; but for those innocent victims, the non-combatants—women, babes, old and sick—I crave your help. Their names and numbers will never be known. They are multiplying in Poland and Galicia, in Belgium and France, in East Prussia and Holland, and elsewhere. Ponder this vast host, voiceless, suffering, dying, crouching beside their blackened ruins or fleeing from the devastated areas both east and west. Think of disease let loose, of the horrors of cold and famine!
“I know it is not easy to visualize details of conditions so foreign to average experience. It needs a mental effort few can make. It is because I was daily witness of such things in the South African War that I dare not be silent. Disease, devastation, starvation and death were words I then learned as war interprets them. I saw a country burnt and devastated as large parts of Europe are to-day; I saw old and sick, women and children turned out of house and home; I saw them, half clad, starving, lying sick to death upon the bare earth; I saw babies that were born in open, crowded trucks; I saw haggard, endless sick, gaunt skeletons, hourly deaths. There in the Boer States death swept away non-combatants in the proportion of five to one of those who fell in the field.
“It is because I know the brunt of this war, too, is falling and must fall, heaviest upon the weak and young, that I appeal now on their behalf, not merely to those who love peace, but to the great body of women who love children. Little children, more sensitive to exposure, to extremes of heat and cold, to tainted food, to starvation, and to the stench, the poisonous stench of war, quickly fade, quickly die.
“Will you not arise and work for peace?—For peace alone can save the children. It would be, I well know, a struggle against powers of darkness and will need the whole armor of God. Yet every sentiment of pity and of civilization, leave alone Christianity, demands the effort. The victims cannot help themselves; succor must come from without.
“Relief, we know, you pour most generously, but relief cannot meet a want so colossal, neither can it touch the worst ills. Cut at the root of the evil—the war itself. A strong lead is needed. Myriads want peace; they never wanted war. In each country this is true; constant proofs reach us from Germany and France, as well as various parts of England. The press of each nation asserts that the people are unanimous for war. It is not so, but those who have the means of speaking, and who swim with their governmental streams, can speak the loudest and alone are heard. Many dare not, many cannot speak. Others make a truce and save thousands of human lives and receive the blessings of thousands of wives and mothers.
“A union of neutral women could investigate the facts of the sufferings amongst non-combatants, and founded upon acquired personal knowledge they could in the name of Humanity formulate demands persistent, cogent, irresistible, not in favor of any one party or nation, but simply for Peace.
“It seems futile to turn to statesmen, governments or prelates for aid. They are tied and bound by position, custom and mutual fear. They await propitious movements. Famine, disease and death do not wait.