Recognition of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I-the Great War
Swarthmore College Peace Collection
Anti-conscription demonstration 1916
Wendy Chmielewski, Curator of the Peace Collection attended the “Resistance to War” conference at the University of Hull (UK), September 7-9, 2014 . The conference included presentations historians and other scholars from the UK and other countries focused on resistance to war from the mid nineteenth century through World War I. Chmielewski presented a paper on the role of women in fundraising efforts that financed the peace movement in Great Britain in the 1850s.
On September 30th, Anne Yoder, Peace Collection Archivist, spoke on World War I conscientious objection at the Kate Furness Public Library in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. This presentation was part of the Furness Library’s program recognizing the centenary of the Great War.
Yoder and Chmielewski will both be attending the “World War I: Dissent, Activism, and Transformation” conference at Georgian Court University (NJ), and co-sponsored by the Peace History Society, in mid October. Yoder will be speaking about WWI conscientious objectors, David and Julius Eichel. Chmielewski will present on the war and anti-rhetoric in the suffrage speeches and writings of movement leaders Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams. Both papers will use resources housed in the Peace Collection.
Peace Collection staff have contributed articles on resistance to World War I as part of the new web site “Home Before the Leaves Fall, Digital Resources in the Delaware Valley on the Great War”. The web site <http://wwionline.org/> contains information about resources in the Peace Collection and Friends Historical Library on peace congresses leading up to the war, women efforts for peace from 1914 onward, conscientious objectors, the varieties of opposition to the war, and the work of British and American Quaker relief organizations.