ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN WAR MOTHERS

I have 550 active legislative chairmen under me, and I have so much writing to do that I have it printed and put in a magazine which is mailed all over the United States.

We are much opposed to pressuring our good Congress. That we wish understood from the very start. We deplore the fact that the Nation's business has so much of a back-door gossipy thing to it. I think it depletes the dignity of our great national policies to have so much paltry, paltry opinion given. We have in our National Capital gentlemen from the States who come to Washington, and gradually they have become the core and heart of the entire universe, and with that in mind I come here with a great deal of temerity and a great deal of respect, and all of my women were thrilled to death to think that I could come to speak before men who are truly trying to lead the world out of its self-made morass. It actually has brought on its own troubles.

Just in little Connecticut we have among our membership two mothers with eight sons in the war. That will give you an idea of how our total suffering was. You go through travail of that kind, and, our country being nonempire building, we came home. The only way we can make our influence felt in the world is to make it like our country in this way: We are so strong nobody dares attack us, not through love of us, not through fear of us, perhaps, but because they think it is pretty unwise, and if we make it unwise to attack small nations in Europe, and later small nations in Asia, I think we will have succeeded and put an end to thousands of years of inevitable

wars.

The American War Mothers are waiting to change their title from American War Mothers to something else, and we hope this is the very dawn of such a hope. We are definitely on record as being in favor of it, and we hope there won't be too much talk about how much it costs, because it cost American mothers more than anyone can compute.

I thank you gentlemen.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very much obliged to you. Your organization is for the ratification of this treaty?

Mrs. FALSEY. Definitely; unqualifiedly.

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you for your very fine statement. Senator Vandenberg?

Senator VANDENBERG. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Alexander Stewart, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ALEXANDER STEWART, WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM

Mrs. STEWART. My name is Mrs. Alexander Stewart, 625 Fullerton Parkway, Chicago. During the congressional session I am in Washington most of the time following legislation of concern to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. As president of the United States section of the WILPF, I represent one national section of an international organization having sections and members in 34 countries. The Women's International League for Peace and

Freedom is one of the nongovernmental organizations given consultative status B by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

In order that you may have in the record a statement of the principles and policies of this organization, I am including the statement adopted at our annual meeting in Hartford, Conn., just last week:

PRINCIPLES

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom wast founded in 1915 in the midst of the First World War. Jane Addams. became its first international president and held this office until her death. Throughout its history the league has maintained a policy and a program consistent with the ideas of its founders. As an international and an interracial organization, its aim is to work by nonviolent means for the establishment of those political, economic, and psychological conditions both at home and abroad which can assure peace and freedom.

POLICIES

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, United States Section, believes in the cooperation of all groups and nations in establishing just law and social well-being as a foundation for international and domestic peace. We believe that the most effective means by which free people may maintain free institutions lie in a positive program which will safeguard human rights, enrich human living, and utilize material resources for peace.

STATEMENT ON ATLANTIC PACT

As an international organization, many questions arise in our minds concerning the North Atlantic Pact. One of the important questions is, "What will be the effect of the pact on the United Nations?"

At the annual meeting we adopted this statement [reading]:

Throughout the 34 years of its existence, the League has stood for a strong international organization, functioning democratically within the framework of law, as essential to lasting peace. We hope that the UN represents the first stage of such an organization and as such we give it our full support. We believe that the present weakness and inadequacy of the UN is due in large part to the climate of fear and distrust within which the member states struggled for their national objectives. The urgent task of today is to create the climate in which the states will cooperate to strengthen international organization, and as rapidly as pos sible, transform the UN into a world government.

Loyalty to the UN demands acceptance and implementation of its decisions by the member states. The record of the United States in this regard is unsatisfactory. The European recovery plan almost entirely by-passed the UN. The Atlantic pact is a further blow to the health of the UN, among other reasons because it deepens the chasm between the West and the Soviet Union and involves a return to balance of power, instead of collective security within the framework of the UN. Urgent attention should be given to securing UN control of armaments and the provision of a UN constabulary, so that the community of nations may not become the victim of national policy.

The League has long supported international cooperation on both a regional and world basis, but has maintained that regional unions should be structures for economic and political cooperation and not military alliances. They should grow from within and not be imposed from without so that their character would represent the views and trends of their constituent parts. We therefore oppose

the direction that has been given to European Union by the North Atlantic Pact and the arms bill.

We believe that the North Atlantic Military Alliance will interfere with the constructive work of the European recovery program and by diverting men, money and strategic materials necessary for economic recovery to military purposes will delay, if not prevent entirely, the coming of the day when Europe will be back on its feet. Adequate reconstruction and rearmament cannot coexist. Judging by past experience, when the choice has to be made between allocating strategic materials to the necessities of daily life or to the needs of a military alliance, the latter stands to gain at the expense of the former.

MEETINGS OF THE WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE

It has been my privilege to go to Europe twice since the end of World War II, and it is my plan to go again this summer. Our organization held its tenth international congress in Luxemburg in 1946 when our women came together for the first time since 1937 when they met in Czechoslovakia. This was a deeply moving experience that I shall never forget, when these women met for the first time after 9 years during which many of them had been in prison or concentration camps, or had lost families and personal possessions. Still they met united by the theme, "A new world order." They were challenged by the words of our honorary international president, Emily Greene Balch, Nobel Peace Award winner, who said:

This is a new chapter in the history of the Women's International League in which the members would continue to be pioneers as long as it is needful.

Last summer in Geneva, I served as one of two consultative members of the United States section to the international executive committee. The opening day, July 7, 1948, I clipped from the front page of the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune an article by James M. Minifie, the headline of which read, "Europeans, United States, confer on defense. Major move is due in the cold war. Western union meeting on Vandenberg plan studies America's role." The article went on to describe the Vandenberg resolution, which passed the Senate on June 11, 1948, and suggested the beginnings of what we now call the North Atlantic Pact. This article implied that we were asking how many millions of dollars the Western Powers could put into the rearming of Europe, and were suggesting that the United States would foot the rest of the bill, which we are now discovering will probably be several billions of dollars over a period of years.

The last three sentences of the article are especially revealing [reading]:

This would almost certainly take into account the practicability of the United States furnishing lend-lease materials and equipment to build up the military forces of the western alliance. The proposals ultimately worked out are scheduled to come up for decision about the time the next Congress assembles in January. They would then be a leading "must" on the agenda of the Eightyfirst Congress.

COST OF REARMAMENT

I wish I could adequately portray, Mr. Chairman, the reactions of the women present. Remember that many of them had spent months or years in prisons and concentration camps, or had lived under occupation. I believe our organization was the first organization to speak out against the North Atlantic Pact and the accompanying arms bill. They spoke as women to women out of the agony of seeing so much

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of what they had struggled to try to create, a world of peace and freedom, destroyed. They said in effect to us, "Are you in America insane? Do you think that Europe can put millions of dollars (it is now estimated in billions) into a rearmament program when we still do not have enough to eat, when we still do not have sufficient clothing, and when we have not begun to rebuild the millions of homes, hospitals, schools, and churches destroyed during the war? We will go back to our governments and say to our leaders that together we must find another way to solve our problems. * We believe that this plan means increasing the tensions between east and west, and that it will weaken, if not ultimately destroy, the United Nations, because it means the arming of nations within the United Nations against each other. We believe that it was never the real intent of the UN Charter to arm nations within the UN against each other. We fear Russia, but we fear also the day when our manpower, money, and resources will be taken from the European recovery program, which has just begun, and used for rearmament.

Gentlemen, you have had many distinguished witnesses before your committee-high governmental officials, military experts, leaders of many organizations-whose experience has been wide and whose sincerity I do not question. Some of them have been proponents, some have been opponents, of the North Atlantic Pact. However, as I have listened to them or read their testimony, I have been struck again and again with the emphasis so often put upon military weapons, rather than the processes of reason, understanding, reconciliation, government, and law, as a solution, stop-gap or long-run.

NATIONAL DEFENSE AND THE TREATY

The CHAIRMAN. If a nation makes an armed attack on you with arms in its hands, how are going to argue with it?

Mrs. STEWART. We have a period now when there is choice, isn't there, Senator? I think both Russia and we have a tendency to put all the blame on the other nation. Each side blames the other, and makes it more or less solely responsible. Actually there is an area of freedom of choice left to work for peace on other than military lines.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no freedom of choice if a nation has an armed attack made on it by another nation. What choice has it, except to lie down or fight? I am talking about the event of an armed attack, and that is the only time this treaty is effective, when a nation makes an armed attack on you. What are you going to do, say, “Wait a minute; I want to argue about this"?

Mrs. STEWART. I would have to answer in two ways: Whether you have attacks or not, if some major nation of Europe is involved, or our interests are involved in some country, whether it is a small or large country, the chances are that we would go to war. But we do have a period now.

The CHAIRMAN. We are meeting in Paris, trying to iron out these things in peace. They are going to meet on the 23d.

Mrs. STEWART. I approve of that. Our organization has always urged a meeting at top levels, and also at the nongovernmental level between people, leaders of church, education, farm, business, labor,

and so on. We would say that would be one of the processes to use

now.

The CHAIRMAN. We are using it now.

Go ahead, though, with your statement. I won't interrupt you any

more.

Mrs. STEWART. It seems to me that we have not squarely faced the fact that the primary problems of Europe are economic, psychological, and political, and not military. We are in danger of trying to solve them by military procedures which cannot answer the need.

UNIVERSAL DESIRE FOR PEACE

May I illustrate? I should like to record some of the reactions I got in Europe as I visited several countries and talked to the common people-teachers, ministers, youth, mothers, social workers, some officials-about their hopes and fears. I was as far east as Czechoslovakia both in 1946 and 1948.

As an ordained Methodist minister myself. I preached in several churches in Prague in 1946 and went back to visit them in August 1948. A meeting was arranged in Prague sponsored by the Methodist women, YWCA, and WILPF, so that my husband, the Reverend Alexander Stewart, and I might speak. We discussed our common problems and discovered many areas of agreement and understanding. Questions were asked and even criticisms offered of some of their Government's policies. But the significant thing was that there was an earnest expression of a desire to keep in touch with us. The chairman, who is a very responsible person and whom I have known for a number of years, said:

You are doves of peace who have come from America. We want you to carry back our good wishes to the American people. Tell them we believe we can find ways of working together. Tell them that we want to be a bridge of understanding between east and west, not a battleground for a futile war. Tell them we believe that, given time, and if Russia and the United States can ease the tension between themselves, we can work out satisfactory solutions to our problems.

As our international summer school in Schiers, Switzerland, where young people and adults joined to study the meaning of democracy, peace, and freedom, we had long and searching discussions. One day a Danish youth, distressed by the bitterness and futility of his World War II experiences, expressed his despair over creating the will to peace in the midst of so much preparation for war. Now I can bear disillusionment among adults, but it is hard to see it so wide-spread among youth-(though I can understand why it might be so). I appealed to these young people to go back to their countries and help create the conditions for peace and freedom, citing things we were doing in America. One of them questioned me by saying:

What does your former Governor Earle of Pennsylvania mean when he says, "What America should do is go around the world with an atom bomb in one hand and the Cross of Christ in the other and let the nations decide which they want dropped upon them?" We do not think that sounds very peace loving.

I answered by telling them of the peace planes that flew from California to Washington, D. C., last year; the peace train that started from the west coast; the 138 ministers who dropped everything in response to a telegram to come to Washington to discuss alternatives