HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La
Home and Education By Belle Case La Follette At 4 o'clock on Christmas afternoon, under the auspices of the Women's Peace Society, a group of women made brief ad-dresses at the Franklin Monument...
...We women of the United States demand that the billions of dollars Congress proposes to spend on the army and navy and military training, for the purpose of killing and race destruction —more money than for all the other purposes of government put together—we demand it be spent for human betterment, for food, for health, for education, for eradicating fear, prejudice and hate—the basic causes of war...
...The subject as announced was "Soviet Russia and the Allied Blockade...
...We are practical...
...This they do in the hope and belief that ultimately all shall share in the resultant of leisure, liberty, and freedom...
...Almost their first act was to abolish capital punishment...
...The result is revolution...
...She says that if the world would make the conditions less difficult for the Germans that there would be no possibility of Germany swinging to the extreme left, but that if they continue to press Germany so hard that they will throw her into the arms of the Bolsheviki...
...Tyrants, in fear of overthrow, wield their power to crush normal progress...
...It is amazing the liberality that one finds in many quarters here, but unfortunately the diplomats never seem to represent the spirit which might lead to better understanding and more harmonious adjustment...
...No, they are only asking that their milch cows on which they depend to save the lives of their starving children, be not taken from them...
...We women have the power to compel disarmament...
...It was almost ten o'clock when Mr...
...Acres of tanks and machine guns, mountains of pistols, bayonets and swords, bullets and cannon balls...
...Steffens...
...And only the other day the newspapers carried a picture of German Disarmament—OF GERMANY LAYING DOWN HER ARMS AT THE BEHEST OF HER CONQUERORS...
...To crush militarism in Germany the Allies destroyed the German Navy, abolished conscription, prohibited universal military training and reduced the German Army to the needs of maintenance of internal order—to the needs of national police regulation...
...Even then the Russian proletariat did not seek revenge...
...The tailor made suits have long sleeves, some of the tailored gowns also have long sleeves, but others have short sleeves...
...It had been many years since I heard Mr...
...It is not for the restoration of the weapons of war, nor any of the insignia of military powor that the WOMEN of Germany are asking for mercy from the Allies...
...What created militarism in Germany will create militarism in the United States or in any other country of the world...
...All sorts of people were there...
...But the general effect is that of straight lines, in spite of the prediction that we should go back to the tight waist line...
...Steffens appeared on the platform...
...The skirts continue short...
...It looks as if the English were beginning to discern this and were trying to ameliorate terms a bit...
...Is not the moral plain...
...The newspapers seem not to have been represented...
...If revolution should ever come in the United States, Mr...
...Looking over the crowd at random, I noticed Fred Howe, Norman Hapgood, Western Starr, Dan Kiefer...
...They sometimes have a belt which marks the waist line but it is so loose that it gives the straight line effect...
...The silhouettes continue to be the straight line...
...But autocracy whether of the Czar or the Steel Trust is blind and will not tolerate evolution...
...It is a difficult role, but he sustains it wonderfully...
...These notes are for you...
...Away with Armaments...
...Nor is there yet even majority rule in Russia...
...While all the horrors and mistakes of the World War are still fresh, while all its burdens and awful responsibilities are still a part of our daily life and experience—NOW is the time for action...
...We would HANG...
...The colors are wonderful and give one a sense of the orient...
...Revolution in Russia has not brought liberty yet, Mr...
...Not the radicals, but the imperialists the world over cause revolution, says Mr...
...Steffens said...
...Evolution is the normal way for humanity to advance...
...Strangers are told that France is very quiet and content now, and the papers give one that impression, but one hears in various roundabout ways of strikes which do not find their way into print...
...You are sure something great is happening—a crisis not without hope, not without danger...
...We propose to be practical...
...The audience was representative in the true sense...
...They raised over six hundred dollars for the Russian Medical Relief Fund...
...Fashion Note direct from Paris: The other day I went to Callots, Mary, to see the fall fashion parade...
...In this heartrending appeal they have the sympathy of the world sisterhood...
...Senators and representatives of course...
...But the minority rule is not like the minority rule of the Czar, nor like the minority of big business in the United States...
...They say that they understand the French hate and fear...
...On second thought I was mistaken about the representative character of the audience...
...The admission was thirty-five cents...
...What first impressed me was the power he had developed as a speaker—the mastery of his audience...
...Steffens leaves you almost as much in doubt as you yourself might be, if you had visited Russia with an open mind for a period of time...
...All the seats were filled and standing room taken on the occasion of Lincoln Steffens' recent address...
...What will destroy militarism in Germany will destroy militarism in the United States and elsewhere in the world...
...The shortage of milk for the children and those who are ill is the worst of all...
...Was not Germany prepared...
...The quiet, subtle philosopher, the suggestive, pleasing talker, had become an aggressive orator, whose voice and gesture thrilled with emotion, who clinched his statements, got his laughs in the right places, who held his hearers spellbound...
...She says that the conditions there are very bad...
...The one cohesive group in control of Russia is the industrial workers...
...there were many social workers, single taxers and a large proportion of Russian Jews, mostly young men and women...
...Steffens illustrated the temperamental difference between Russians and us, thus: Stop a group of Russians on the street, tell them some horrible tale such as that a man has just killed his wife and chopped her body into bits, the Russians will be shocked, but they will pause to ask, whatever caused a man to do a thing like that...
...Callot has by far the best things I have seen...
...After groping helplessly for a while, they settled on the policy of compelling—and compulsion is tyranny—all citizens to do their part in productive work...
...Steffens address an audience...
...Away with them now...
...Now is the time for disarmament...
...Extract from Fola's Letter of December 10 Dorothy M. is here...
...Two weeks ago today, Major General Tasker H. Bliss, in a notable address, before a notable audience in the City of Philadelphia, said that there can be no enduring and effective association of nations, nor any successful international court of arbitration for the maintenance of peace among the nations, so long as the present military system exists and those nations are aimed to the teeth against each other...
...FOLA Lincoln Steffens on Russia OLD MASONIC Temple, 9th and F Streets, Washington, D. C., is a barn of a place and an awful firetrap besides...
...We have the ballot...
...But France is full of fear of another invasion still...
...Germany does not want civil war and the violence of an extreme revolution, but if she can't get coal to run her industries and if she can't get credit to purchase raw materials the answer will be a terrible upheaval...
...Is it the promise of something better...
...Home and Education By Belle Case La Follette At 4 o'clock on Christmas afternoon, under the auspices of the Women's Peace Society, a group of women made brief ad-dresses at the Franklin Monument on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C. Quotations from these addresses were circulated by the press throughout the United States and even Europe, so that many requests have come to me for the full text of what I said...
...We need not plead nor beg...
...We women want the starving fed, the blockade lifted, trade restored, friendship renewed, mutual forgiveness and peace and good will on earth again...
...He spoke under the auspices of the Russian Medical Relief Society...
...On this issue of militarism we hold the balance of power...
...Perhaps it is his genius to keep his camera always ready and to be always on the watch for the next snapshot...
...And here on this day precious to the Christian world, at the very door of the Capitol of our beloved nation, we vow to use our voices to DEFEAT those senators and representatives in Congress who stand for Militarism and War and to ELECT senators and representatives who stand for Peace and Disarmament...
...Was not Germany efficiently prepared beyond the hope of any other nation to surpass...
...The meeting had been advertised for 7:30 sharp...
...We would not stop to reason nor question why...
...The stereopticon pictures used to illustrate the introductory talk on Soviet Health Work took a lot of time and were not very satisfactory nor especially enlightening...
...Lincoln Steffens considers himself first of all a reporter—one who sees and transcribes without bias what he sees...
...We propose to watch Congress...
...Always he leaves you puzzled to know just what his own interpretations and conclusions are...
...At any rate Mr...
...Steffens thinks it would be of a very different kind...
...B.C.L...
...Dolly says that many of the more liberal spirits in Germany think that it is remarkable that the French do not hate and fear-more than they do—in view of the terrible devastation that their country has undergone...
...Possibly he doesn't interpret or draw conclusions...
...She has spent six months in Germany...
...I should judge it has a capacity of about eight hundred people...
...Disarmament BERTHA VON SUTTNER, the only woman ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, received that honor because of her great story, circulated by hundreds of thousands, translated into many languages, whose title, "Die Waffen neider," we may today freely translate to mean "Away with Armaments...
...They are using lace again, but the lace is tinted in various colors to harmonize with the costume...
...I know that these fashion notes will be of great interest to Dad...
...This emotion the Germans find very natural in the French...
...Russia is taking care of her children—providing them food, fostering their health and growth, educating them—not as a charity, not as a sentiment, but as a policy, to build a nation that will have faith in the new Russia and justify the great experiment...
...It is as plain to the man on the street and to the woman in her home as to the highest military officer and the wisest statesman, that disarmament is the first step toward preventing more and more terrible wars, which, if not stopped, will consume all the energies and all the resources of all nations until civilization is destroyed and humanity wrecked...
...I will purchase some of the French fashion magazines and send them over to you, Mary, as you may find them suggestive...
...It isn't being done in the smartest gowns...
...There is great suffering, through lack of coal and lack of nourishing food...
...The Russian revolution came only when conditions under the Czar had become absolutely intolerable...
...That specious argument that preparedness prevents war has been utterly and forever disproved...
...They are idealists...
...Many of the gowns are what they call the chemise model...
...we Americans would rush off instanter to raise a mob to hang the man...
...This is modified by various draperies in different models giving variety...
...Theirs is the elemental cry that moves women to action...
...I take the first opportunity to reproduce it in our magazine...
Vol. 13 • January 1921 • No. 1
