Reconstructing Women's Thoughts: The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Before World War II.

Walker, Pamela J.

Reconstructing Women's Thoughts: The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Before World War II, by Linda K. Schott. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1997. ix, 211 pp. $39.50 U.S.

By "reconstructing women's thoughts," Linda Schott explores a neglected stream of the wider women's movement and she also challenges the narrow focus of much intellectual history. Schott argues that traditional intellectual history, which has typically ignored women and privileged those ideas presented in books over those presented in organizational records or through social action, ignores important streams of thought. It therefore fails to express the diversity of intellectual life in the first half of this century and favours periodization that does not adequately describe the work of these women.

Schott's research is based on the organizational records of the Women's League for Peace and Freedom (WIL) and its predecessor, the Women's Peace Party; articles and books by prominent women in those organizations; and correspondence between members. Schott explores in depth what pacifism meant to these women, how they understood its connection to feminism, and how their position evolved. Jane Addams's Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) argued for "moral substitutes" for war that would promote sympathy between people and offer a common purpose that would build the courage, physical strength, and selflessness that many of her contemporaries believed were brought out only in warfare. Addams argued that women and workers would be essential to this change because they would bring a new nurturing spirit to the public sphere as the creators and sustainers of life. This put those two groups most often excluded from peace organizations at the centre and shifted the focus away from a singular concern with international relations. Addams's ideas, particularly her emphasis on nurturing as an alternative to war, were an important influence on several decades of women's peace activism.

Schott examines in detail how WIL activists put these ideas into practice. They debated if nursing or providing food was an aspect of a nurturing spirit that would contribute to peace or a part of a larger war effort. They questioned if self defense might be justified and the significance of disarmament. The WIL was also very concerned with racial justice because of a commitment to cultural pluralism and the recognition that lynching and other forms of racism contributed to a culture of violence in America. Several African American women sat on the WIL national board during these decades and Schott describes the debates about how best to include racial justice in its program as well as the tensions between African American and white women. The WIL also worked with the labour movement, particularly in support of collective bargaining, which these activists saw as a local example of how nations might proceed with international disputes. These chapters are very informative and these women were strikingly progressive in both their thought and activism. This discussion, however, would have been richer had Schott considered more fully how WIL activities compared to those of other feminist groups and given a fuller sense of how and why it worked in concert with particular organizations.

Schott concludes by questioning historians' division of dominant intellectual currents into Victorianism and modernism. Aspects of women's pacifist thought, particularly the echoes of separate spheres ideology and the moral certainty it suggests, are part of a Victorian world view. On the other hand, the WIL's commitment to diversity among its members and the realization by many activists that the harmony and integration they sought would never be fully achieved were, Schott suggests, consistent with a modernist sensibility. Schott further argues that the WIL women had less difficulty integrating emotion and reason than many of their prominent contemporaries because they were raised as women in a culture that linked femininity and emotion and they were also progressive, educated women who strived to attain a rational perspective on social issues. Schott thus adds gender to an aspect of the intellectual history of the period. Many intellectual historians, however, would eschew a simple division between Victorianism and modernism. It is not clear if other activists of the period would also fit uneasily into those two categories and in what ways these women were, or were not, distinctive.

This is clearly written, engaging book that would be as effective in an undergraduate course as it is in addressing a specialist audience. It will particularly interest scholars concerned with feminism, women's organizing, and pacifism.