Histories

This article about Mrs. Green appeared in the Cleveland Press in 1944. It was written by Louis B. Seltzer, Editor of the paper, after a talk which he gave at the Unitarian Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He had known her since she was in charge of arranging street meetings for Suffrage. Louis Seltzer was the cub reporter. My mother was always there to chaperone the college girl speakers, and I sometimes went along to pass out "VOTES FOR WOMEN" buttons. -- Helen Green Ansley

She is a very tiny lady. The weight of her body is less than the years of her life, which, with the birthday observed recently, number 86.

She has many times thanked God for the privilege of the long life given her on this uneasy planet revolving in interstellar space, and prayerfully hopes that it will be possible for her to see the war's end and the peace which, she confidently believs, will come after.

Abraham Lincoln died when she was 7, and the country subsequently has proceeded through alternate peace and war, panics and depressions, prosperities and economic and social ferments almost continuously throughout her lifetime.

It has, she thinks, become a vastly different country than that which she knew as a girl, in the respect that whereas it was once, before the turn of the century, largely an agricultural civilization, it is now, in these days, largely industrial, technological and scientific.

It had been a long time since I had seen her last, and, as I stood before an audience in the Unitarian Church at Euclid and 82d street, my eyes fixed upon her face. Several decades had wrought a few changes in her face, and made her hair white, and yet time had not taken from her eyes the eager, inquiring, youthful challenge which always seemed to be there -- the unquenchable thirst to know what the world about her was doing, and why.

It did not surprise me, therefore, when in a small, halting voice, she asked a question -- a question which evidenced both her alertness to the relatively most important things happening in the world of today, and her knowledge of them.

"That problem," I said in answer to her question. "That problem, Mrs. Green, deep down is no harder to solve than the woman's suffrage question upon which you and I and so many others fought 25 and 30 years ago. It will require just as much courage and perseverance as it took on the suffrage question. The result will be the same. We will wonder, after it has been solved, why there was such a fight about it at all, even as now we regard the right of women to vote as something that should hae existed always.

"Peace in the world requires the same courage and perseverance. Because we did not succeed the first time does not mean we will not succeed this time, or, if we fall short of our objective this time, that we shall not succeed the next time. The people of the world want peace and they will eventually get peace."

It was a little later that Mrs. Frederick Green, 1936 E 93rd stree, said, from a life rich in experience, active in the things she believed were helpful for the world in which she lives and of which she makes herself a part:

"The world will see peace. It will be a lasting peace. The world moves in great epochal waves, but it always moves forward, even when it appears to be receding.

"Peace in the world will be built upon understanding. We must understand the other people of the world, and their problems, and they must understand ours. Understanding other people starts in our own home, our own neighborhood, our own city, and state, and country.

"The world has suddenly grown big, so big that it moved faster than our ability to follow it. Now we are taking an inventory of what the world consists of, and we are finding that, although their circumstances are different, their problems different, that the world, as always, consists of people. If we can only keep this in our minds, we shall have a peace, and enduring peace which is based upon understanding."

And then Mrs. Green said:

"The world must not be so weary from the war that it does not work hard at a peace, because peace will not come easily. It wil come, as only any worth-while thing can come, from hard effort.

"It is true that we have been through much in our country in the last 15 years, but we must remember that, no matter what we have been through, it will be even worse for us and for the rest of the world if we fail in our high mission, in our destiny, this time as the peace-builders of the world."

She is a very tiny lady, and her hair is white and her face lined, her voice falters, but her eyes are alight with the interest of a world she loves and her mind is quick to see the big and sweeping changes that are upon her world. We say to the tiny lady with the eyes so bright:

"You love peace and understanding so much because there is peace in your heart and understanding in your soul, and it is from such sources that this world will irresistibly and inevitably fashion a peace that will endure among people for a long time to come. And like all others who have known you, and admired you, I , too, join in the prayer that you will live not only to see the peace worked out after the war, but that you will live while the world is at peace."

-- L.B.S.