affiliation between the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the
North Wales Women Peace Council. 23
In 1919 when Wilson was traveling to Paris for the Paris Peace Conference, a Young
Alsatian women greeted him with a bunch of flowers and thanked him as the man who had
recovered Alsace and Lorraine from German control. This woman was used by the press to
represent that women should be grateful for the work of these great statesmen, rather than
greet them with political demands. 24 Although some women had been granted suffrage by
this point, there were still very strong ideas on the role of a woman, and these were
extended to their involvement in international politics. Although, women emphasised the
differences that existed between sexes in their favour. Women used the essentialist
argument that stated that women were naturally more peaceful than men as they were the
‘guardians of life’ to argue that they should therefore have greater involvement in peace
discussions. 25 Anges Maude Royden also argued that women ‘know the sufferings of war
without its glory’ . 26 These arguments were also used by the League of Nations Union as one
of their leaflets quoted ‘War is negotiation of all women’s primary instincts. War means
destruction. Women are concerned with construction; with bearing and rearing children,
with home making, with caring for the weak, the sick, the aged, with preserving the lives
that war must destroy’ . 27 Dorothy Gladstone referred to age old juxtapositions between
genders when arguing that women and their maternal instincts made them a perfect fit to
support the League. She called for women to see it as an opportunity to ‘mother the world,
23 Williams, p. 186. 24 Siegel, pp. 5-6. 25 Maude Royden, ‘War and the Women’s Movement’, in Towards a Lasting Settlement, ed. by G. L. Dickinson and C. R. Buxton (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), pp. 131-146 (p. 314). 26 Stöckmann, p. 226. 27 ‘Women Work for Peace’, League of Nations Union Leaflet, 1934.
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