Jane Addams' Legacy

...for a peace treaty free from the futility of revenge...

...The problems faced by Jane Addams in World War I have many similarities to the problems of today, and the policies she espoused are still pertinent...

...Peace and Bread is both an historical record and an intimately personal interpretation of Jane Addams' intellectual and spiritual struggle as she labored for peace in the midst of war...

...Reviewed by Lucy P. Corner An important legacy from the observance of the Jane Addams Centennial is the anthology of her writings, Jane Addams—A Centennial Reader...

...Jane Addams was a woman not only of great works, but also of great ideas, and to both she brought, as Helen Hall points out, "the clarity and self-discipline of the artist...

...It therefore came about," she wrote, "that ability to hold out against mass suggestion, to honestly differ from the convictions and enthusiasms of one's best friends did in moments of crisis come to depend upon the categorical belief that a man's primary allegiance is to his vision of the truth and that he is under obligation to affirm it...

...Since many of her books are out of print and others difficult to obtain, this record is of immense value in making available in one attractive volume the essence of the thinking of Jane Addams on the wide range of her concerns, and in her own inimitable words...

...She learned in the depths of her being from the hospitals and devastated cities of war-torn Europe, from the chancellories of the great, from the prisons of her own Chicago the cruelties, the "curbed intelligence and thwarted good will" of nations at war...

...for a League of Nations based upon the meeting of human needs and strong enough to express the new spirit of ordinary people desiring a better world...

...Available from Women's International League for Peace and and Freedom, 2006 Walnut Street, Philadelphia 3, Pa...

...The list of introducers guarantees a lively volume — Helen Hall of the Henry Street Settlement, Ashley Montague, Katharine F. Len-root, Aline Saarinen, Hilda A. Smith, Roger Baldwin, John Haynes Holmes...

...The sections deal with social work, the position of women, child welfare, the arts, civil liberties, and international peace...

...Each section is introduced by an authority, pointing up the relevance of Jane Addams' words to the issues of today...

...These words, as Justice Douglas remarks in his introduction, "are today a real tonic, even though they were written about conditions that we like to think have passed away...

...As was her custom, Jane Addams observed a problem at first hand...

...for freedom of speech and the rights of conscientious objectors...

...The book is arranged topically with selections culled not only from her published volumes, but also from magazines and reports available only in specialized libraries, and ranging all the way from the well-known "devil baby" piece of folklore to "Disarm and Have Peace...

...It is timely that in these days of increasing international tension this little book should appear in its third edition...

...We are indebted," Miss Hall continues, "to her deeply philosophical mind as she took the joys and sorrows of those around her and fitted them into their place in history—making what had gone before, what was, and what should be into an understandable pattern of life, invested always with her own warmth and insight...

...Perhaps her greatest legacy in the long run is not the policies she espoused, wise as these still seem, but her loyalty to a conviction wrought out of uncertainty and pain...

...Unlike many of her fellow workers in other crusades, she was unable to support the participation of the United States in the war...

...the feeding of starving people, not as a tactic in the cold war, but "solely and only because they are hungry...

...As the first president of the organization later known as the "Women's International League for Peace and Freedom," she worked for continuous mediation by the neutral nations...