Open Christmas Letter
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.
Most British women were in favour 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.
When Fawcett turned the NUWSS to war work, eleven pacifist members resigned, later to join the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
[4] In Jus Suffragii in December 1914, Carrie Chapman Catt published a letter that she had received earlier from Anita Augspurg, Lida Gustava Heymann, and several other German women activists including presidents of woman suffrage societies in Germany.
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".
Do not humanity and common sense alike prompt us to join hands with the women of neutral countries, and urge our rulers to stay further bloodshed?
...Even through the clash of arms, we treasure our poet's vision, and already seem to hear "A hundred nations swear that there shall be Pity and Peace and Love among the good and free.
[9] In September 1914, Marie Stritt, president of the German Union for Woman Suffrage, wrote to Carrie Chapman Catt 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.
[17] 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 for four days beginning 28 April 1915.
[9] 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.
[10] The NUWSS membership rejected a resolution favoured by Helen Bright Clark and Margaret Bondfield[11] which would have supported a delegation of women at The Hague.
[20] Having already travelled to Flushing, Netherlands on a mission of mercy in late October 1914 to provide food for refugees from the fall of Antwerp, Chrystal Macmillan was able to attend the women's conference and speak for the UK.
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 1918.
