The eleventh meeting of the Fredonia Shakespeare Club was held on Jan. 16, hosted by Barbara Albert. President Lucille Richardson welcomed 12 members.

Priscilla Bernatz read the minutes from the Jan. 9 meeting. The minutes were approved as written.

The Club’s area of study this year is Nobel Prize Winners. Judi Woods read her paper “Nobel Peace Prize 1946” which is summarized as follows:

In 1946, at the age of 79, Emily Green Balch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her decades of work to promote international peace. Emily, though soft spoken, was a powerful voice to defend peace as a viable alternative to war.

Balch was born in Jamica Plain (now part of Boston) Jan. 8, 1867 to a prominent Bostonian family. She graduated in the first class at Bryn Mawr in 1889, where she was awarded the highest honor – a fellowship to study for a year in Paris. After her studies in Paris, Balch returned to Boston where she was involved in establishing the Dennison House, a settlement home.

After several years of doing social work, Balch returned to school, taking classes at both Harvard and the University of Chicago in Economics. To further her education she returned to Europe to attend the University of Berlin where she studied Economics and Social Order.

Upon return to the States, she was hired by Wellesley College in Boston to teach Sociology and Economics. She taught at the college for the next twenty years, becoming dean of both departments. During her professorship, she researched Slavic immigration to the USA, in both their homelands as well as the communities after immigration. The study “Our Slavic Fellow Citizens” remains one of the most comprehensive studies on immigration from Slavic countries to the USA at the turn of the century.

In 1915 Emily took a leave from teaching to attend the International Conference of Women, sometimes referred to as the Peace conference in the Hague. She was one of over 1,500 women who during WWI met at the Hague to not only protest the war, but to develop strategies for lasting international peace. The women met as the war was raging, some traveling through much danger just to attend. Emily wrote “it looked doubtful to me, as it did to many others, how valuable the meeting could be made. I felt, however, that even a shadow of a chance to serve the cause of peace could not today be refused.”

The conference produced resolutions that were felt would end wars if all countries would agree to the terms. Envoys headed by Jane Addams and Emily Green Balch took the resolutions to each country for review and consideration. Emily traveled to the Scandanavian countries and Russia. They recorded their journey and impressions in a report “Women at the Hague; the International Congress of Women and Its Results.” The report describes the conference as well as Jane and Emily’s personal reflections on peace, war, politics, and the central role of women in promoting peace.

However, rather than to receive praise for their work towards peace, the women had their patriotism and loyalty questioned. They were ridiculed, taunted, called pro-German, traitors, and cowards. Many newspapers from the countries from which the delegates came denounced the congress as “pro-Germany,” traitorous, hysterical, and silly. Winston Churchill called them “the most dangerous women in the world.” Theodore Roosevelt called them silly, and the conference baseless.

Emily asked Wellesley College to extend her leave so she could continue the important work of peace. They refused, so at the age of 52 Emily found herself unemployed.

The women met again, following the war. They established the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), a permanent group for peace. In 1932 the WILPF members collected six million signatures for the World Disarmament Petition and delivered them to the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva. This group continues today, as “still the world is haunted by the spectre of war.”

During the period between the two world wars, Emily “helped in one way or another with many projects of the League of Nations – among them, disarmament, the internationalization of aviation, drug control and the participation of the United States in the affairs of the League.

The second World War forced Emily to reexamine her pacism. In the end she concluded that the horrors of Hitler were so severe that justifying war was the lesser of two evils.

In 1946, at the age of 79, Emily was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Emily’s faith in the good of all people led her to believe… “I feel myself a citizen of the world. I am at home wherever there are people. Wherever I go I know I shall find cruel, sly, dishonest, unpleasant people and everywhere I shall find magnanimous, generous people with keen minds – friendly, honest, open, serviceable… I am a patriot and my fatherland is this dear dear earth, sole home of life in infinite space.”

Linda Dunn assisted at the tea table.

The next meeting of the Club will be hosted by Judi Woods when Barbara Albert will read her paper Nobel Prize in Literature 1978.