for Continuous Mediation began without Ford. Disappointed with Ford's efforts, Schwimmer persevered for several months, but exhaustion and a heart condition led her to resign and withdraw from the mission in March 1916. Failure to secure the backing of the peace mission from the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace and hurt by both Addams and Jacobs lack of support, she resigned from the committee. She was unable to return to the United States until August and stayed only about a month before she was back in Sweden, suffering from illness. According to Beth S. Wenger, chair of the history department at the University of Pennsylvania, the debacle of the Peace Ship "signaled the beginning of a smear campaign against [Schwimmer] and the eventual termination of her public career". Though Henry Ford's anti-Semitic beliefs that German-Jewish bankers had caused the war predated his involvement with Schwimmer, she was portrayed in the American press as the reason for his prejudices. She was also accused of swindling Ford out of money, being a German spy, and a Bolshevik agent. Until the end of the war she remained in Europe, returning to Hungary in 1918. Having gained the country's independence, Mihály Károlyi was selected as the new Hungarian prime minister. He appointed Schwimmer as the ambassador to Switzerland, making her one of the world's first female ambassadors. Károlyi also tabled a bill guaranteeing women's suffrage for literate women over the age of 24, which was passed by the Parliament later that year. In February 1919, in Berne, Schwimmer organized a peace conference for the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace; however, she was recalled from her post days before the communist coup d'état in March. Barred from leaving Hungary, Schwimmer was unable to attend the Zurich Peace Conference in May. Béla Kun's communist government was soon overthrown by another coup d'état placing István Friedrich as the head of the government. Friedrich's inadequacy led Admiral Miklós Horthy's forces to try to establish order by implementing a reign of White Terror by cleansing the country of Jews and communists. In 1920, Schwimmer fled to Vienna where she lived as a refugee, financially supported by her friend Lola Maverick Lloyd, until she secured permission to emigrate to the United States in 1921. Statelessness Schwimmer renounced her Hungarian citizenship and arrived in the United States on 26 August 1921, first settling in Winnetka, Illinois, near