Eighty years later, the peace historian Frances Early, in her book, A World without War, has fulfilled Witherspoon’s wish, and accomplished much more. A World without War is not only a thoroughly researched organizational history of the Bureau of Legal Advice, it is an insightful and analytical reconstruction of the relationships among antiwar organizations: their interaction, mutual support, and cooperation, as well as the debates and tactical differences among them. Through the work of the Bureau of Legal Advice, Early examines the National Civil Liberties Bureau (forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union), the New York City branch of the Women’s Peace Party, the Socialist Party, the Emergency Peace Federation, and the Union Against Militarism—in fact, all of the antiwar organizations that together forged what Early calls a “culture of peace.” This community of peace activists might more aptly have been called a “subculture of peace,” because its idealistic, militant, and courageous white middle-class young women and men made only a small, but strong, current against the tidal wave of nationalist conformity and repression that drowned most of the voices of protest. Early’s ability to read from organizational minutes, correspondence, and flyers in uncanny. She skillfully interrogates the primary sources to develop a detailed picture of the process of coalition-building in a difficult time and of the movement culture and the gender dynamics of a brave and creative cohort of women and men. The author’s special contribution to the peace, civil liberties, and women’s history of World War I is to be found in her profound understanding that “the women involved in civil liberties work” in a traumatic moment on the home front “developed a way of thinking and of acting in the world as serious-minded pragmatic activists, which built upon but went well beyond the legacy of Progressive era white women’s politics” (xx). Early also acknowledges the ways in which pacifist men, mainly conscientious objectors who were obsessed with the issue of masculinity because they were being ridiculed and reviled as cowards and “sissies” by the press and the public, began to accept women as equal comrades and even as leaders.

A World without War is not only an organizational study, it is also a fascinating and insightful political biography of Frances Witherspoon, which is thoroughly integrated into the movement history. As the author states, “personalities are central to historical narrative, and the dynamic interplay between the personal and the political” (xxi) is a central theme of this study. Here Frances Early uses her women’s history foremothers to great advantage. She builds on the feminist scholarship of the past twenty-five years, particularly lesbian history and theory, to describe and understand the life-long relationship of Witherspoon and her female partner, Tracy Mygatt.

The story of the relationship between Witherspoon and Mygatt is told in non-ideological and unsentimental fashion, yet it is touching and inspiring. Both women moved easily in feminist, socialist, and pacifist circles and gave their energies to a number of causes as they saw the need. Early points out that, despite their privileged backgrounds, they were not exempt from discrimination, even in radical political groups. Like the abolitionist women before them, their struggle for civil liberties, human rights, and economic equality for others deepened their consciousness of their own need for liberation. Both women were daughters of prominent and affluent, native-born white southern families. Both attended Bryn Mawr, where they became aware of the legacy of female independence and separatist female institutions bequeathed to them by nineteenth-century feminism. They took what they learned about social issues and female community into the larger world and dedicated themselves to work for peace, labor, and all the oppressed.

It is interesting to note Early’s report that right after the Russian revolution most of the male comrades of the female activists were so divided by struggles within and outside of the Socialist Party over whether or not to support Bolshevism that a significant proportion of socialist, as well an anarchist and left-liberal women, who were excluded from what Early calls “power brokering,” chose to stay focused on civil liberties work (138). This dynamic reminds me of the choice made by Women Strike for Peace in the early 1960s not to become involved in the red-baiting by the male leaders of SANE but rather to focus their efforts on organizing support for the nuclear test ban treaty.

Early does well to remind us that the Bureau of Legal Advice was the only legal aid group in New York City to counsel draftees and their families free of charge. It was also the only association to represent individuals who could not afford to pay for an attorney in magistrate’s courts. The Bureau of Legal Advice handled thousands of cases for immigrants and laborers who had nowhere else to turn. Providing legal representation and advice required Witherspoon to conduct perpetual and often desperate fund-raising campaigns to keep the Bureau of Legal Advice alive. We might wonder if her upper-middle-class background made begging for a worthy cause acceptable as a form of female philanthropy. Early acknowledges the remnants of noblesse oblige attitudes, and even traces of racism and anti-Semitism, among the pacifist feminist women, but her overall evaluation is that they were forerunners of the feminist peace activists of the latter part of the twentieth century, who came from varied backgrounds and were somewhat more sensitized to issues of race and class.

What is relevant to us today is Witherspoon’s attempt in 1920 to “put together one big union” (194) of progressive forces to fight for such seemingly separate causes as amnesty for conscientious objectors and other political prisoners, lifting the blockade on Russia, fighting against U.S. intervention in Mexico, and putting an end to lynching. This effort failed in a conservative period, but it did set a model for a multi-issue peace movement.