Emily Balch

“In 1946 Emily Greene Balch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor which only one other American woman—Jane Addams—has ever received. For Miss Balch it crowned thirty years of pioneering for peace. In May, 1915, in the midst of World War I, a handful of American and European women, including Jane Addams and Emily Balch, then a Wellesley College professor, made an unprecedented journey through Europe to urge a concrete plan for attaining an early peace. Before their governments knew what the women were about, they visited 14 countries, interviewed 22 prime ministers and foreign ministers, the presidents of two republics, a king, and the Pope. This novel bit of history has gone almost unrecorded in accounts of the first World War episode marked the entry of Miss Balch into a field entirely new to international political activity. Though Emily Balch was reared among proper Bostonians, among the socially and intellectually privileged, it was her choice, in advocating political and social ideas far in advance of her time, to mingle with many improper Bostonians, prisoners, prostitutes, paupers, labor leaders, strikers, and pacifists.”

This page is maintained by Charles V. Balch, charlie@balch.org.

Back to the Balch Home Page.