A long standing pacifist, Henry Ford was encouraged to try to stop World War One by a movement originated by the
Woman’s Peace Party to organize a peace conference in Stockholm to discuss ways the conflict could be brought to an end. Ford came up with the idea to gather and send influential pacifists to Europe to see if they could negotiate and agreement to
stop the war. Ford had leased the ship Oskar II and planned to sail from Hoboken, NJ on December 4, 1915. Representatives
included dignitaries from Denmark, Holland, Norway, Sweden and the United States. Unable however, to convince the warring nations to come to an armistice, the trip, while well meaning, did little to help Henry Ford's public image. The press generally condemned Ford’s efforts with editorials calling it “an impossible effort to establish an inopportune peace” The New York Herald called it “one of the cruelest jokes of the century.”
