September 15, 1933

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom held a three-day meeting at Vassar. The president of the student Political Association, Lucile Harvey ‘34, shared the podium at the opening dinner with President MacCracken, John Lovejoy Elliott, leader of the Ethical Culture Society, and Lena Madesin Phillips, founder of the Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, among others. Other speakers during the meeting included the pioneer multiculturalist Rachel Davis DuBois and Mary E. Wooley, the president of Mount Holyoke College.

The gathering approved a resolution to work for “immediate conclusion of a treaty covering reduction and supervision of arms by the Disarmament Conference before and after it convenes Oct. 16,” as well as one urging recognition of Soviet Russia.

The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, long in the planning, had opened in Geneva in early 1932, but when Adolf Hitler took Germany out of the conference—and of its sponsor, the League of Nations—in October, talks collapsed.