Open Christmas Letter
Encyclopedia
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
addressed "To the Women of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
", signed by a group of 101 British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
women suffragists at the end of 1914 as the first Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
approached. The Open Christmas Letter was written in acknowledgment of the mounting horror of modern war and as a direct response to letters written to American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
feminist Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt was a women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920...
, the president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), by a small group of German women's rights activists. Published in January 1915 in Jus Suffragii, the journal of the IWSA, the Open Christmas Letter was answered two months later by a group of 155 prominent German and Austrian women who were pacifists
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
. The exchange of letters between women of nations at war helped promote the aims of peace, and helped prevent the fracturing of the unity which lay in the common goal they shared: suffrage for women
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
.
The decision by some suffragists to speak out against the war split the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. Most British women were in favor of a quick solution to the conflict and were inclined to work toward that end in any way such as by helping fill positions abandoned by men off at war. Others were nationalistic and sought to make certain that British women were seen as patriotic, as doing their part, so that the men in power would think more highly of them and subsequently pass woman suffrage legislation. A minority of women advocated peace vociferously and worked with international peace organizations or with refugee aid societies. All suffragists from the most strikingly militant to the most actively pacifist agreed not to disrupt the nation at war in their promotion of women's suffrage. Toward the end of the war, British politicians rewarded them with a partial victory: suffrage for property-holding women aged 30 and older.
Background
From 1906 until mid-1914, the Labour PartyLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
in the United Kingdom was the party seen as most supportive of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
—the right of women to vote. Suffragettes and other women's rights activists organized to elect Labour candidates and to push for legislation that expanded the rights of women. In August 1914 when the world became embroiled in war, the British women activists were sharply divided into two camps: the majority who wished to work with their country's war effort, and a minority who opposed the conflict. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , also known as the Suffragists was an organisation of women's suffrage societies in the United Kingdom.-Formation and campaigning:...
(NUWSS) wished to have the NUWSS members work for the war so that the men in politics would view the women with greater respect and would thus be more amenable to granting them the right to vote. However, the NUWSS membership included those who were against war. When Fawcett turned the NUWSS to war work, eleven pacifist members resigned, later to join the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established in the United States in January 1915 as the Woman's Peace Party...
(WILPF).
Like the NUWSS, the more militant Women's Social and Political Union
Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union was the leading militant organisation campaigning for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom...
(WSPU) led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst chose to cease their obstructive activism for women's votes and instead advocated the alignment of British women to the cause of war. However, in October 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst
Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was an English campaigner for the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom. She was for a time a prominent left communist who then devoted herself to the cause of anti-fascism.-Early life:...
travelled to Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
and spoke out against the war, becoming one of the first suffragettes to do so. She said that "peace must be made by the people and not by the diplomats." Though pacifist, Pankhurst held with her mother and sister to the general agreement that suffragettes would abstain from militant activism for the duration—she arranged for activist women to join with the War Emergency Worker’s Committee and fill some of the positions that had been abandoned by men leaving for war.
German suffragists
In Jus Suffragii in December 1914, Carrie Chapman Catt published a letter that she had received earlier from Anita Aupsburg, Lida Gustava Heymann, and several other German women activists including presidents of woman suffrage societies in Germany. The letter was entitled "To the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, through its president, Mrs. Chapman Catt." It began, "To the women of all nations warm and hearty greetings in these wretched and bloody times." The German women expressed that the "criminally rekindled war" should not separate women from all countries who had previously been united "by the common striving for the highest object—personal and political freedom." They stated that "True humanity knows no national hatred, no national contempt. Women are nearer to true humanity than men."Catt published another letter from German women's rights activist Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and fighter for women's rights. In 1910, she organized the first International Women's Day....
, one that expressed the desire for all women not to let "the thunder of guns and the shouts of the jingoes
Jingoism
Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests...
" make them forget that the rise of civilization amongst the European countries held much in common. Zetkin wrote that the women of the world should guard their children against the "hollow din" of "cheap racial pride" which filled the streets, and that "the blood of dead and wounded must not become a stream to divide what present need and future hope unite."
British suffragists
Emily Hobhouse
Emily Hobhouse was a British welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the poor conditions inside the British concentration camps in South Africa built for Boer women and children during the Second Boer War.-Early...
organized the writing and signing of a peace-promoting letter from British women: the Open Christmas Letter. In the 1900s, Hobhouse
Emily Hobhouse
Emily Hobhouse was a British welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the poor conditions inside the British concentration camps in South Africa built for Boer women and children during the Second Boer War.-Early...
campaigned against and worked to change the appalling conditions inside the British concentration camps in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
built for Boer
Boer
Boer is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for farmer, which came to denote the descendants of the Dutch-speaking settlers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
women and children during the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
. She saw in the German letters the opportunity for maintaining vital international relations among women who could help mitigate the damage that war would bring. She wrote what she called a "Letter of Christmas Greeting" in November 1914 and circulated it for signatures of women who wished for peace. Pankhurst and Helen Bright Clark
Helen Bright Clark
Helen Bright Clark was a British women's rights activist and suffragist. The daughter of a radical Member of Parliament, Clark was a prominent speaker for women's voting rights and at times a political realist who served as a mainstay of the 19th century suffrage movement in South West England...
were among the first to sign Hobhouse's plea for continued sisterhood among the women of the world.
Others among the 101 signers were Margaret Ashton
Margaret Ashton
Margaret Ashton was an English suffragist, local politician, pacifist and philanthropist, the first woman City Councillor for Manchester....
, Margaret Bondfield
Margaret Bondfield
Margaret Grace Bondfield was an English Labour politician and feminist, the first woman Cabinet minister in the United Kingdom and one of the first three female Labour MPs...
, Eva Gore-Booth
Eva Gore-Booth
Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth was an Irish poet and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist...
, Esther Roper
Esther Roper
Esther Roper was an English suffragist who was one of the first women to graduate and gain her BA at Owens College in Manchester.Esther was the daughter of a Manchester factory worker who later became a missionary in Africa....
, Maude Royden, Helena Swanwick
Helena Swanwick
Helena Lucy Maria Swanwick, née Sickert CH was a British feminist and pacifist.-Life:Helena Sickert was the only daughter of the painter Oswald Sickert and the Englishwoman Eleanor Louisa Henry, an illegitimate daughter of astronomer...
, and a wide range of women united by the wish for "undiminished sisterly relations" and a swift end to hostilities. Included among the women were some who were members of the Women's Labour League, and some of the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
. One of the listed women was "Mrs. M. K. Gandhi" but it is unknown whether Kasturba Gandhi
Kasturba Gandhi
Kastürbā Gāndhi was the wife of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, marrying him in an arranged marriage in 1883.-Early life and background:...
, the wife of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, asked that her name be included. At least one of the signers was an American: Florence Edgar Hobson was the New York-born wife of English Liberal social theorist and economist John A. Hobson
John A. Hobson
John Atkinson Hobson , commonly known as John A. Hobson or J. A. Hobson, was an English economist and critic of imperialism, widely popular as a lecturer and writer.-Life:...
.
Message
Under the heading "On Earth Peace, Goodwill towards Men", the letter's salutation addressed "Sisters" and began, "Some of us wish to send you a word at this sad Christmastide, though we can but speak through the Press..." The women of the UK were prevented from direct communication with the women of Germany because of the war. Instead, they sent their missive to America which was at that time a neutral nation. The letter continued, "The Christmas message sounds like mockery to a world at war, but those of us who wished and still wish for peace may surely offer a solemn greeting to such of you who feel as we do." The letter mentioned that, as in South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and in the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
of 1912–1913, "the brunt of modern war falls upon non-combatants, and the conscience of the world cannot bear the sight."
Response
Minna Cauer
Wilhelmine Theodore Marie Cauer, née Schelle, usually known as Minna Cauer was a German educator, journalist and radical activist within the middle-class women's movement.-Life:...
, and Helene Stöcker
Helene Stöcker
Helene Stöcker was a German feminist, pacifist and sexual reformer. Stöcker was raised in a Calvinist household and attended a school for girls which emphasized rationality and morality...
were among the German signers; Rosa Mayreder
Rosa Mayreder
Rosa Mayreder was an Austrian freethinker, author, painter, musician and feminist. She was the daughter of Franz Arnold Obermayer, a wealthy restaurant operator and barkeeper, and his second wife Marie.Rosa had 12 brothers and sisters and although her conservative father did not believe in the...
, Marianne Fickert, Ernestine Federn, and Ernestine von Fürth were in the group of Austrian signers. The response was entitled "Open Letter in Reply to the Open Christmas Letter from Englishwomen to German
and Austrian Women" and was published in Jus Suffragii on 1 March 1915. The letter began:
Peace initiatives
Directly after war broke out in August 1914, Rosika SchwimmerRosika Schwimmer
Rosika Schwimmer or Bédy-Schwimmer "Rózsa" Rózsika was a Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist and female suffragist.Rosika Schwimmer was born on September 11, 1877 to a Jewish family in Budapest in Austria-Hungary...
, a native of Austria–Hungary working in England but prevented by war from returning home, outlined her idea for an international conference of neutrals to mediate between warring nations. In September 1914, Marie Stritt, president of the German Union for Woman Suffrage, wrote to Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt was a women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920...
in America with "deep personal regret" for the "terrible war" to say that the women of Germany must withdraw their invitation to the annual IWSA International Alliance meeting in June 1915 which was to convene in Berlin. In December 1914, Canadian Julia Grace Wales, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, expanded eloquently on the concept, and published her views in a pamphlet entitled "Continuous Mediation Without Armistice", popularly known as the Wisconsin Plan
Wisconsin Plan
The Wisconsin Plan was a proposal created by Julia Grace Wales to end World War I. It envisioned an international conference composed of delegations from neutral countries, who would mediate between the warring powers and disseminate peace proposals, with the goal of eventually reaching a fair...
. Taking these messages as her inspiration, Catt proposed that, instead of holding a woman suffrage convention in Berlin, an international peace congress of women should meet in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
for four days beginning 28 April 1915.
When this announcement reached the UK, the NUWSS was divided on the one hand by patriots such as Fawcett and on the other by the signers of the Christmas letter who wished to send peace delegates. However, the majority of the NUWSS were nationalistic more than they were peace-minded—they were primarily concerned with helping the UK men win the war. The NUWSS membership rejected a resolution favored by Helen Bright Clark
Helen Bright Clark
Helen Bright Clark was a British women's rights activist and suffragist. The daughter of a radical Member of Parliament, Clark was a prominent speaker for women's voting rights and at times a political realist who served as a mainstay of the 19th century suffrage movement in South West England...
and Margaret Bondfield
Margaret Bondfield
Margaret Grace Bondfield was an English Labour politician and feminist, the first woman Cabinet minister in the United Kingdom and one of the first three female Labour MPs...
which would have supported a delegation of women at The Hague. Because of this, Margaret Ashton resigned from the NUWSS and was subsequently censured by her local Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
branch of suffragists. As well, Helena Swanwick and Maude Royden resigned from the NUWSS and made plans to attend at The Hague.
At The Hague 28 April to 1 May 1915, a large congress of 1,150 women from North America and Europe gathered to discuss peace proposals. The event was called the International Congress of Women
International Congress of Women
The name International Congress of Women was used by a number of feminist and pacifist events since 1878.-Paris, 1878:The First International Congress of Women's Rights convened in Paris in 1878 upon the occasion of the third Paris World's Fair. Seven resolutions were passed, beginning with the...
, or the Women's Peace Congress. A planned contingent of 180 British women was greatly reduced to just three persons by the government cancellation of British ferry service across the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
, stranding Royden and Swanwick, among others. Having already traveled to Flushing, Netherlands
Flushing, Netherlands
Vlissingen is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an important harbour for centuries. It was granted city rights in 1315. In the 17th century...
on a mission of mercy in late October 1914 to provide food for refugees from the fall of Antwerp
Siege of Antwerp
The Siege of Antwerp was an engagement between the German and the Belgian armies during World War I. A small number of British and Austrian troops took part as well.-Strategic Context:...
, Chrystal Macmillan
Chrystal Macmillan
Chrystal Macmillan was a Scottish barrister, feminist and pacifist, and the first female science graduate from the University of Edinburgh as well as that institution's first female honours graduate in Mathematics. She was an activist for women's right to vote, and for other women's causes...
was able to attend the women's conference and speak for the UK. Macmillan, a signer of the Open Christmas Letter, had previously resigned from the NUWSS when its refusal to stand against the war had become clear. Macmillan was selected as one of the international committee who would travel to neutral nations and champion the proposal of the Congress. The Wisconsin Plan was unanimously adopted as the optimum method for returning peace to the world, and Macmillan, Schwimmer and the committee traveled to the neutral U.S. to present President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
with the plan. Many of the women's peace proposals were used by Wilson in his Fourteen Points
Fourteen Points
The Fourteen Points was a speech given by United States President Woodrow Wilson to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918. The address was intended to assure the country that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause and for postwar peace in Europe...
, and the women's efforts helped encourage the later founding of the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
.
Women's suffrage
During the war, with British suffragists abstaining from taking militant action, British statesmen such as Prime Minister Henry Asquith began to have a change of heart regarding their right to vote. In early 1917, a clause which provided suffrage for property-holding women aged 30 years and older was debated, and in June it was attached to the bill which would later become the Representation of the People Act 1918Representation of the People Act 1918
The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an Act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in the United Kingdom. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act...
. Suffragists who were pacifists and suffragists who were nationalistic could both congratulate themselves for winning this incremental victory. Ten years later, full voting equality with men was achieved in the UK with the Representation of the People Act 1928
Representation of the People Act 1928
The Representation of the People Act 1928 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This act expanded on the Representation of the People Act 1918 which had given some women the vote in Parliamentary elections for the first time after World War I. It widened suffrage by giving women...
.