Canadian-born Wisconsin resident Julia Grace Wales was an English professor at the University of Wisconsin during World War I. Deeply troubled by reports of the brutal conflict, Wales formulated a plan to stop the fighting through peaceful means. Originally entitled Continuous Mediation Without Armistice, the plan proposed that the United States organize a conference of intellectuals from neutral nations who would act as mediators for the warring nations and who would devise a solution to the conflict without humiliation to any nation. In 1915, the recently formed Wisconsin Peace Party endorsed the plan and began distributing copies in pamphlet form. Wales' proposal became known as the Wisconsin Plan and within months, Wales was in the Netherlands, where the International Congress of Women unanimously selected the Wisconsin Plan as the solution to the war. Although President Wilson appeared initially interested in Wales' proposal, the sinking of the British liner Lusitania in March of 1915 led administration officials to back away from mediation.
Its founders were self-empowered, politically astute women who, in 1915, tried to get world leaders to mediate World War I. These women were also well educated, privileged, not timid and not enfranchised.
As national and international leaders of women's suffrage groups, including those from countries about to go to war with the United States, they wrote proposals for mediation as the alternative to war. Hungarian Rosika Schwimmer, organizer of Hungary's first women's trade union, proposed that President Woodrow Wilson convene a permanent conference of neutral nations that would mediate conflicts.
Elna Munch, wife of the Danish minister of war, endorsed her proposal. Canada's Julia Grace Wales, a University of Wisconsin professor proposed a mediation plan, got it passed by the Wisconsin Legislature and sent it to the U.S. Congress.
Jane Addams, U.S. social work pioneer and the first U.S. woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, helped organize a Women's Peace Congress in Washington, where 3,000 women met and developed a Program for Constructive Peace. When the conference in The Hague convened in the spring of 1915, some women had traveled through war to get there.
"The largest hall in The Hague was needed for the meetings, over 2,000 often being present; and difficult as it is to conduct business with so many languages and divergent views, Miss Addams and the other officials carried on orderly and effective sessions," wrote U.S. delegate Emily Greene Balch.
Carrying the Hague proposal, two WILPF teams met with heads of state in 13 European capitals and Jane Addams with Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C.