{"id":303952,"date":"2017-04-16T03:52:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T02:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-womens-peace-activism-in-world-war-i-matters-now\/"},"modified":"2017-04-16T03:52:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T02:52:31","slug":"why-womens-peace-activism-in-world-war-i-matters-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-womens-peace-activism-in-world-war-i-matters-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Women's Peace Activism in World War I Matters Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A hundred years ago, soon after winning reelection on the campaign slogan\u00a0“He kept us out of war,”<\/a>\u00a0President Woodrow Wilson called on the US Congress to authorize\u00a0“a war to end all wars.”<\/a><\/p>\n

The US entry into World War I abruptly ended a different campaign to end war. Between the onset of hostilities in Europe in July 1914 and the US declaration of war in April 1917, a determined group of women activists lobbied the president and Congress to maintain American\u00a0neutrality<\/a>\u00a0and mediate a\u00a0“negotiated peace.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Although these women’s efforts proved futile, their persistence and passion still resonate today. By insisting that all citizens \u2013 even women, who did not yet have the right to vote \u2013 could and should participate in the highest levels of politics, they helped create a civic culture of engaged citizenship that continues to inform American politics today.<\/p>\n

Negotiating Peace<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea of arbitrating World War I may seem naive in hindsight. Yet for nearly three years, numerous pacifist groups and individuals in both the United States and Europe advanced proposals for neutral mediation.<\/p>\n

Proponents of international mediation hoped diplomatic intervention could bring the war to a swift end and prevent additional loss of life. They also hoped to pave the way for a new type of diplomacy, based on international law and voluntary arbitration, that would ensure lasting peace.<\/p>\n

Men and women on both sides of the Atlantic participated in the campaign for neutral arbitration. Most memorably, American automobile magnate\u00a0Henry Ford<\/a>\u00a0collaborated with Hungarian feminist pacifist\u00a0Rosika Schwimmer<\/a>\u00a0to charter a\u00a0“Peace Ship”<\/a>\u00a0to take a private delegation to Europe to broker peace talks.<\/p>\n

The “Peace Ship” attracted media attention. However, my research on\u00a0Sophonisba Breckinridge<\/a>, a founding member of the\u00a0Woman’s Peace Party<\/a>, suggests that Breckinridge and other members of this feminist pacifist organization \u2013 including future Nobel Laureates\u00a0Jane Addams<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Emily Greene Balch<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 had a…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hundred years ago, soon after winning reelection on the campaign slogan\u00a0“He kept us out of war,”\u00a0President Woodrow Wilson called on the US Congress to authorize\u00a0“a war to end all wars.” The US entry into World War I abruptly ended a different campaign to end war. Between the onset of hostilities in Europe in July […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":303884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-303952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}