Dora B. Montefiore 1912
Source: Daily Herald, November 21, 1912, p. 2;
Transcription: Ted Crawford.
HTML Markup: Brian Reid.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
[The following short piece, though unsigned, is possibly by Montefiore and certainly she responds sharply to criticism of it by Evelyn Sharp—see below. Montefiore seems to have been very close to Zetkin.—Note by Transcriber]
It was with great pleasure I read the letter of our comrade, Clara Zetkin, writes Margaretta Hicks, hon. secretary of the Women’s Council of the B.S.P. It is necessary for women Socialists of every country to exert all their strength against the horrors of the war of the Balkan States being added to.
Immediately we heard that international meetings were to be held in every capital of Europe to protest against the war, the Women’s Council, B.S.P., applied to have a woman speaker. We wished to stand side by side with our men in their protest.
Nothing was settled until Sunday night at the Opera House meeting, when Mr. Quelch gave up five minutes of the time allotted to him so that I might speak in the name of the women Socialists of England, and add their protest against this war.
We do not want war in our own country, to see our homes burnt or to see old men and women, our mothers and fathers, and little children turned into the cold and butchered, and we strongly protest against the men of our country being sent out as soldiers to make war on the homes of the people of other countries. War is never just. It is merely conquest by the stronger.