Rheta Childe Dorr

              Figure

Rheta Childe Dorr


Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr
Now in Belgium
To Lecture on European War

Sending To Europe For A Lecture
WE ARE establishing a new precedent in the Lyceum by sending to the War Zone for the most up-to-date lecture on the great European conflict.  We conceived the idea of sending a special investigator to Belgium who will stay there, if not driven out, until next fall and return with the very latest information from the front.  In discussing this with friends in New York City, all were unanimous in saying that Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr was the best fitted for such an undertaking.  She has the two essential qualifications: She is a fine speaker and can tell about her experiences and what she learns; she is without doubt the best investigator in America.  Added to these qualifications, she goes with an open mind.  She speaks French, Belgian and German, as well as English, and has spent many years in England and on the Continent, some months of which were spent in Belgium.

After a conference she went straight to Brussels where U.S. Minister Brand Whitlock appointed her on the committee for distributing relief.  In this way she will come in close, intimate contact with the people and conditions as they actually are; further, she has a permit to take photographs.  Later she will go into France, and will undoubtedly see some fighting.

To illustrate how widely she has traveled, and how thoroughly she goes into any matter she undertakes, one need only mention some rather exciting experiences she has had in Europe.  She was in Russia during the summer of 1906, living in a revolutionary household in Petrograd, going about to secret meetings with a member of the executive committee of the Peasants' Union, a young woman with a German University degree who was devoting her life to educating the peasants.

In August of that year Cronstadt, the port of Petrograd, Sveaborg, the port of Helsingfors, Finland, and Reval, the largest Russian naval station, mutinied all at once.  Mrs. Dorr went to Helsingfors, with several other correspondents, and there she saw a company of Cossacks ride down people in the streets.

She has paid two visits to Russia, spending the winter of 1913 in Finland.  She has visited all the Scandinavian countries, the first time in the early summer of 1906, having attended the coronation of King Haakon of Norway.  She reported this event for Harper's Weekly, the New York Evening Post and the Boston Transcript.  She has, also, visited Germany, France, Belgium and England studying sociological conditions.

She has tried always to get at national characteristics.  It is said that her interpretations of Finnish life and character may claim to be unique in English.  The Finns, themselves, seem to think so.

Among her factory experiences she prizes her discovery about the great Christmas illusion.  She sold handkerchiefs through a Christmas holiday in Siegel and Cooper's New York store, standing on her feet from eight in the morning until half past ten at night for eight days.  She sold about $85.00 worth of goods every day and received $6.00 for the eight days' work.  She wrote an article—one of the best things she has written—called Christmas from Behind the Counter.  So powerful are the department stores, so valuable their advertising, that not a single big magazine in the country would print the article.  Finally the Independent published it.  For three successive years that article was republished in half a dozen religious and social papers and magazines.  It did something to stop the Christmas exploitation of women.

We wish to emphasize the fact that Mrs. Dorr's lecture on Belgium and the War will not be a mere travelogue, but a close-hand study of Belgium and the Nations at War by one who knows social conditions and something of European politics.



SUBJECTS:

In The Wake of War
Social Democracy




An Appreciation
I WONDER if we quite comprehend the importance of the pioneer?  And do we believe that the days of pioneering are over?  Communities and institutions while in their plastic or nebulous state are determined, given form and ultimate character, by their pioneer men and women.  Witness any community settled by Puritan or Cavalier.  As was the child, so is the man.  As is the character of the movement in its inception, so it is likely to be in its fruition.  At any rate, its original characteristics are not, as a rule, obliterated.  Hence the importance and the immense responsibility of the mother—the primary teacher in the life of the child.

To be a real pioneer in any movement one must be a personage in a fine sense, a being beautifully self-sufficient.  Rheta Childe Dorr is a personage.  She can place her ego at any base and have altogether adequate supplies for her own needs, without concerning herself about a supply train or a possible line of retreat.  If she were to die, I imagine she would like her face toward the dawn.  For these reasons she is at home on the firing line, would make a distinctively good courier; with a hound's sense of the trail, she knows where to go, when to go, and how long to stay.  But, as I have said, she is a personage and does not merely follow the trail but blazes the way, and, hence, with entire self-respect, she goes where other women have not gone, does what other women have not done, indeed, what few men have done.  It is because of purpose and character like hers, do we reverence personality.

Hence it is not strange that she goes to Belgium and, knowing the language of the Belgians, gets into human touch with their woes and with whatever of hope they have, and tells their thrilling, gripping story.  So, too, she makes her way to the heart of the feminist movement, meets its Pankhursts and tells what you would most care to know, and so interweaves her story with anecdote, that sympathy, knowledge, and a just judgment are the net result.

Or, with equal grace and ease, she makes her way to the life of the American working woman, to the shop girl, to the woman behind the counter, and, with sympathy born of actual experience, the experience of a co-laborer, she writes on our mental film a picture of the tragedies, the hopes and aspirations of future American motherhood that will soften our prejudices, remove our misunderstandings and, instead, bring to our minds that fine human being of the future who will be neither parasite nor slave, but man's companion, which God intended her to be.  Mrs. Dorr's message will be a new force and new contribution to the platform.

W. H. S.


Extract from one of Mrs. Dorr's Letters to the bureau
ONE THING I thought of. You know how musical the Germans are. If I can, I shall get phonographic records of the real soldier songs. ‘I Had a Comrade,’ is a famous song. They are singing it in the trenches. It would be a good idea to get French and Belgian songs also. We have heard only of ‘Tipperary,’ but there are much better songs.





Mrs. Dorr, A Great Speaker

Personal Comments
GILBERT E. ROE, Former Law Partner of Senator Robert M. LaFollette—Rheta Childe Dorr speaks as she writes, clearly, directly and eloquently.  She has an inexhaustible fund of information, an amazing array of facts gathered at first hand in a dozen countries of the earth.  An audience of men listen to such a woman with respect.

SCOTT NEARING, University of Pennsylvania—Rheta Childe Dorr combines the profound knowledge of a trained sociologist with the eloquence and charm of a trained writer of romance.  I give her articles to my young men students who read them eagerly.  I should have difficulty in interesting them in the same subjects less delightfully set forth.

FRANKLIN P. ADAMS, The Globe, New York—The simplest, sincerest and best speech I ever heard a woman make.

REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN—I owe her thanks for many of the facts concerning the lives of working girls embodied in The House of Bondage.  Rheta Childe Dorr knows these girls, knows the conditions of their lives, both in and out of the factory, as few writers have ever known them.  She has lived with them, worked with them, associated with them in closest intimacy.  I know no other sociologist who understands his subject, both theoretically and practically, as Mrs. Dorr understands her subject.

FREDERICK C. HOWE, Commissioner of Immigration, New York—Cooper Union audiences, made up chiefly of intellectual working men and women, are the most critical a speaker can face.  They like Mrs. Dorr because they have confidence in her.  She knows exactly what she is talking about, and her simple, lucid English, her humor and tolerance, her ready response to questions from the floor, please as well as enlighten.  A Cooper Union crowd wants more than mere entertainment.  It wants truth.

ARTHUR A. READE, Instructor in English Literature, The University of Helsingfors, Finland—Mrs. Dorr lectured twice at the University of Helsingfors.  Practically every English speaking resident of the city, including many of the faculty, heard her with delight.  No American man or woman who has visited Finland has been able to talk to us so ably and intelligently about her country.  If many women in the United States have such a grasp of political, industrial and other conditions, the American men ought to be glad to give them the vote.



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