SHOULD WOMEN ASK FOR PEACE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3984, 17 July 1915, Page 7

SHOULD WOMEN ASK FOR PEACE.

MMF. ADAM'S ELOQUENT ANSWER. The “Guuiois' ’publishes the text- or .Mine. Juliette Adam's reply to the invitation sent her by Eleanor Fell to attend the International Women's Congress at The Hague. It is as follows : “Madame, —Are you truly an English woman? Although I am but ht•tle of a suffragette, I must confess to you that I better understand those English women .wno would like to light. England and France to-day have proof of what arbitration, and mediation would have done for us. To ask French women at this moment to talk of arbitration and mediation, to discuss an armistice, is to ask of them an abdication of their national rights. “All that they could do, all chat thev ought to Ro, at the moment ot Germany’s unspeakable act (I do cot speak of myself alone, who for 44 years have foreseen the ferocity ot the German attack at the moment of our most complete and humanitarian peace), all that French women eon id desire is to watch over and applaud their children, their husbands, their brothers, even their fathers, with the conviction that a defensive war it> such a sacred thing that everything should be given up everything forgotten, everything sacrificed, that death itself should be faced heroically to defend and save what is most holy in the world, one's country. W ilk tor habitual generosity we have conquered our hatred and have treated the conqueror well and forgotten. He has taken shameful advantage- of this to prepare to crush us. “To-dav every German act, outside acts of war, is monstrous. They lie, they loot, they burn, they kill women and children, they take hostages, they assassinate wounded, stretcher bearers and doctors, they set fire to ambulances. they violate women, young girls and nuns! And how many Belgian victims have you in England? They destroy, for the sake of destroyi ing, objects which more barbarous centuries have respected. “Around me, Madame. I see nothing among my friends anc relations nu<keroie deaths. It would be treachery to those I ’nave lest to seek anything but what is and ought to be. if the God of right and justice, the enemy of the demon, of brute force and of made pride, is the true God.’