The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2013

46 JULY-AUGUST 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL did she resume her work with the Franklin County Suffrage Association in the spring of 1914, this time as a paid employee and organizer, but she began looking for another opportunity to leave home to travel overseas. After World War I broke out, American women began spearheading ever-growing numbers of relief organizations for European refugees. Atcherson saw in this work a way to return to Europe, and to do something useful. Through a connection with the rector of a local church, she made contact with Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, and others who had formed the American Fund for French Wounded, headquartered in New York City. Both Atcherson and her mother became involved with AFFW duties in Columbus, and Atcherson eventually traveled to New York to meet Morgan. In 1917, Morgan sent her to France, cover- ing all her expenses, to take on additional responsibilities near the war zone. There Atcherson worked for a year with Morgan and others at the village of Blérancourt, where the AFFW had established an outpost for civilian and refugee relief. She was in charge of organizing the donations coming from the United States and then readying them for redistribution to the locals and refugees who streamed into the area. After a year at Blérancourt, Anne Morgan split from the AFFW to form a new organization, the American Committee for a Dev- astated France. Atcherson chose to go with Morgan to the new organization, and Morgan sent her to the ACDF Paris Depot, where she worked more directly with organizing the many vol- unteers who came through Paris to work. “I dealt with people,” she later recalled. “I got to love that job; it was really fascinating. I saw all the new workers.” Atcherson thrived on her new level of responsibility. “Being in charge of one branch of the organization,” she wrote to her mother, “had made me want to make good more than ever, and I am trying just as hard as I can.” By 1921, however, the recon- struction work was starting to wind down for the American women, and it had become monotonous for Atcherson. The ACDF would continue working in France until 1923; but by 1921, she had become restless again, wondering what to do next. She resigned from the ACDF in May 1921, and sailed for home. Joining the Foreign Service The 19th Amendment had been ratified in 1920, so there was no suffrage job waiting for Atcherson back in Columbus. She later remarked of this time in her life: “I knew I was going to want a job one of these days, and what would I ever find, in the first place, that was as exciting as the Nineteenth Amendment had been. … I was looking for a place to land.” Atcherson had been giving her future much thought, so when she returned to the United States, she went directly to Washington, D.C., to look up some of the men she had met and worked with while in Paris, including some young officers at the American consulate. They had socialized as part of the American wartime expatriate community, and often worked together on issues concerning war relief and recovery. (Atcherson apparently lent her typewriter for their use since it was in better shape than the one at the consulate.) She wondered, “What are these young men doing that I couldn’t do?” In the meantime, rumors had begun circulating that the newly appointed American ambassador to Paris, fellow Ohioan Myron Herrick, was going to ask Atcherson to be his private secretary, or that he would personally arrange for her to be appointed to the American embassy in Paris. Atcherson later insisted that “I was never going to be anybody’s private secretary.” Instead, she pursued her contacts at the State Department, calling on several of her friends from Paris, including Tracy Lay and DeWitt Poole, to see what they might think about her “doing the kind of job they were doing.” Lay explained the Foreign Service examination process to her and told her that she would have to study international law, world history and two languages to pass the tests. He recommended some books for her to use to study and advised her to go to a university history department for further resources and instruction. While in Washington, she also went to see some of her former contacts from her suffrage work, including the influential Ohio native and activist Harriet Taylor Upton. Upton was acting as an adviser to President Warren G. Harding on matters relating to women, now recognized as a potentially powerful new voting bloc. When Atcherson told her about the Foreign Service, an incredulous Upton asked: “You said there’s never been a woman in that Service?” Atcherson replied: “No, there’s never been one.” Working with officers at the U.S. consulate in Paris, Atcherson wondered: “What are these young men doing that I couldn’t do?”