others, formed two delegations of women who met with European heads of state over the next several months. The women secured agreement from reluctant foreign ministers, who overall felt that a mediating body would be ineffective. In spite of their hesitancy, the ministers agreed to participate, or at least not impede, the creation of a neutral assembly, if other nations agreed and if U.S. President Woodrow Wilson would initiate its establishment. In the midst of the war, Wilson refused. By the time Schwimmer returned from Europe in the fall, sentiment had changed in the United States and many feminists believed that pacifism would hurt the cause for suffrage. Disagreeing with them, Schwimmer did not think the struggle for women's rights should focus solely on attaining suffrage. She strongly believed broader changes were needed and women's voices were crucial for ending violence against humanity. She also felt that neither Catt nor Addams worked hard enough to secure the broad support needed for peace work from reform-minded women. Determined to continue pressing for a mediation conference, she decided that if politicians and feminists would not act, it would fall on individuals to work to end the war. Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, had pledged $10 million towards peace initiatives which would result in action to end the war. Teacher Rebecca Shelley and poet Angela Morgan became convinced that Ford and Schwimmer should meet. They arranged a series of demonstrations and public meetings in Detroit hoping that publicity would facilitate a meeting. When it did not have the desired effect, Shelley met with the editor of the Detroit Journal and a reporter, Ralph Yonker, who was a favorite of Ford, set up an interview for Schwimmer. Within three weeks, in early December, she set sail aboard a Peace Ship to Stockholm, chartered by Ford, with him and other pacifists. The Oskar II arrived in Christiania, Norway on 18 December, but without a definite plan of how they would end the war. Without strong leadership from Ford, the pacifists on board jockeyed for power positions, and Schwimmer was resented for having been entrusted with the international correspondence from heads of state. Confronted with ridicule and hostility by the press, and in Schwimmer's case suspicion because of her Hungarian roots, Ford returned to the United States abandoning the peace mission to the Women's International Peace Association on 24 December. In January 1916 the Neutral Conference