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Gentlemen of the United States Senate, there is an old saying that one man, with God, makes a majority, and I say to you that any man who has the brains to understand the intents and the sure effects of this iniquitous Charter and the entrails to fight it, has God with him. It must be killed: We cannot sell our American birthright of liberty and justice and opportunity for this mess of autocratic pottage. Therefore, this Charter can be killed and shall be killed-God helping. You are being told that your jobs depend upon support of this witches' brew of all things vile. After cajoling you and attempting to bribe you, the gang back of this attack upon American and world liberty is holding a whip over you to lash you to heel. Have you so little vision that you cannot see the insult in that threat and see in the threat their own, acknowledgment that the measure cannot pass on its merits? Have you so little pride that you had rather cling to your office in dishonor than to lose it perhaps yet retain your self-esteem and the respect of all men for a man of unyielding integrity? I have done all that I can do, at a committee hearing, to help you see the evils of this Charter. I have shown you, not a perfect substitute for it, but at least a vast improvement upon it which can be further perfected by Senate discussion and amendment. In commending this material to your most careful study and criticism, I pray God to incline your minds and hearts to His truth, to the highest service of our Nation and our age, and to this greatest opportunity you will ever have to rise to heights of mental and spiritual grandeur.

Mr. chairman, may the exhibits which I have prepared become a part of my statement?

The CHAIRMAN. You may file them. I shall have to look at them and determine whether they will be printed in the record.

Mr. DARRIN. Unless you can assure me that this proposed alternative constitution will appear in the record, I do not intend to submit it.

The CHAIRMAN. All right; you do not have to.

Mr. DARRIN. You cannot assure me of that?

The CHAIRMAN. I want to look it over, because I want to see how much expense will be involved if it is printed in the record.

Mr. DARRIN. If it is wanted, it is available.

Are there any questions from any source?

(There was no response.)

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Darrin. I hope you will report to the association on your testimony. That is all.

Has Mr. Frederick J. Libby come in?

(There was no response.)

The CHAIRMAN. At this point I wish to announce that I have received a telegram from the president of the American Bar Association, whose members are supposed to know something about the Constitution, approving the Charter and endorsing ratification at the earliest possible moment. I shall place the telegram in the record later. It is from Mr. David A. Simmons, of Houston.

The next speaker is Mrs. Grace Keefe.

ST

STATEMENT OF MRS. GRACE KEEFE, NATIONAL SECRETARY, WOMEN'S LEAGUE FOR POLITICAL EDUCATION

The CHAIRMAN. Before you start your testimony, Mrs. Keefe, I may say that I have here a number of other requests to speak, apparently from the same organization which you represent, the Women's League for Political Education.

Mrs. KEEFE. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you representing all of them, or do all of them want to talk?

Mrs. KEEFE. They would each like to have time. We have four members of our executive board here. We all came from Chicago. We have members in other States, but the short notice we had did not permit us to get in contact with them. So if you will hear these four

The CHAIRMAN. Four representing the same organization and testifying the same way?

Mrs. KEEFE. No, we are not, our testimony includes different points. We have so arranged it. We should very much appreciate it if we could all be heard, for we have made a long trip.

The CHAIRMAN. We did not wire that all of you could be heard, we wired that you could be heard.

Mrs. KFEFE. When we testified before the committee on the Austin-Wadsworth bill-before the Senate committee-the arrangement was similar to what we had hoped for this time. The four of us divided the time.

The CHAIRMAN. If you divided your time now, you would not have more than 3 or 4 minutes apiece.

Mrs. KEEFE. A thousand miles is a long way to come.

The CHAIRMAN. I know.

Mrs. KEEFE. We had very short notice.

The CHAIRMAN. That is very true; but we did not advise any of the others that they could be heard; we advised you, because you said you would represent the Women's League for Political Education. You may proceed for the present. We will see about it.

We shall be glad to file any statements of the other ladies. However we will hear you first and see how we get along. You may proceed. Mrs. KEEFE. My name is Grace Keefe. I am national secretary of the Women's League for Political Education, with headquarters at 6209 South Laflin Street, Chicago, Ill.

Our organization includes women voters in some 22 States, broken down into congressional districts. Our aim is to arouse women to a consciousness of their responsibilities as citizens and to understanding the principles underlying our form of government.

Because I am the mother of nine children-my eldest son recently having received an honorable discharge from the United States Navy-my stake in the future of this country is a large one. That is the reason why I am here.

The first question that arises in connection with the United Nations Charter is the haste with which it is being handled.

The League of Nations was given long and thorough consideration by the Senators. We are told it took years of deliberation and discussion before our Declaration of Independence was adopted and 14 years more before our Constitution was finally accepted. Is it that the Charter must be signed and sealed before the men in the armed forces are returned to their homes? It has been claimed that servicemen are in favor of the Charter, but I recall an incident that points to a different conclusion. When the extension of the Selective Service Act was up in Congress, it passed the House by but a single vote. The men were in the country then and letting their representatives in Washington know where they stood. We also recall the way prohibition was put over in the absence of the soldiers and the consequences of that hastily adopted legislation.

In justice to the men who are making the greatest sacrifices, we ask the Senators, Is it decent to rush this Charter through the Senate in their absence?

We believe our first obligation is to establish peace by taking steps to conclude the present war with Japan. According to many sources Japan has made offers which apparently yield everything we could ask, but it would seem that some of our navalists and certain interests want to carry on.

Admiral Halsey said recently:

We are drowning and burning the bestial apes all over the Pacific and it is just as much pleasure to burn them as drown them.

Do we forget that our own fine American boys are meeting the same fearful fate every day the war continues? Aren't the heartrending scenes from the Franklin and the Bunker Hill convincing evidence of what our boys are enduring? Can we justify prolonging this slaughter and suffering? Meanwhile, with this savage war still going on, we are called upon to ratify this Charter, contrary to Senator Connally's statement of October 25, in which he said, quoting the Connally resolution:

That the United States cooperate with its comrades in arms in securing a just and honorable peace.

And further the Senator continues:

When these pressing and imperative achievements shall have been accomplished, the resolution then looks to the establishment of international authority to prevent aggression and preserve the peace of the world.

Note Senator Connally's words, "when these pressing and imperative achievements shall have been accomplished." Then it was we were to look for the establishment of international authority. It appears we have the cart before the horse. The machinery to maintain and enforce a peace that is not yet established must be agreed to, and our armed forces kept ready to strike wherever and whenever a breach of this "nonexistent" peace occurs. In other words, we agree to maintain a peace that is not yet established.

Getting to the matter of the Charter itself, the principle of military force and coercion upon which it rests in the final analysis renders it wholly unacceptable and contradictory in spirit. You may maintain order by force, which is achieved in penal institutions, but the peace of prison walls is not the kind of peace we seek. The easy comparison of a world army with a local police force is sheer nonsense. A local policeman is called upon to act where an individual breaks existing law and the individual is held responsible for his

crime. An international army or air force which moves in with bombers against helpless populations and indiscriminately burns, maims, and destroys is not an instrument of justice or law and order. The question of coercion of States was thoroughly debated in our Constitutional Convention in 1787. The men who wrote that Constitution called a spade a spade. They regarded coercion of states in their collective capacity as war; they did not call it police action. War it was and war they called it. James Madison in his Journal of the Convention observed that the more he reflected on the use of force the more he doubted the practicability, the justice, and efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually. Alexander Hamilton in the New York State Convention to ratify the Constitution, said:

It has been observed, to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself; a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. The single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against it.

Such a policy as this Charter advocates is a direct negation of the principle expressed in the Atlantic Charter:

All nations, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force.

We are told to have patience, that this is but a beginning, not to look for perfection, and so forth. Meanwhile all the implements of total war, every hellish device to destroy, maim, and kill human being are being brought to perfection. The laws of nature governing the production of such weapons admits of no haphazard guesswork; everything is precision. Contrast this with the flagrant violation of moral laws laid down by the Almighty to govern human relations, then ask yourself if we can leave the fearful weapons produced by exact physical laws in the hands of men who yield to political expedience and pressure to flout the moral law. "Unless the foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand," said that great philosopher Henry George. And former President Garfield warned us, "Unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations." When all the verbiage and window dressing is stripped from the United Nations Charter, it stands revealed as nothing but a military alliance of the Big Three, even now meeting in secret session.

The chief proponents of the Charter frankly admit it as such. Said Senator Vandenberg:

I hasten to assert that so far as force is concerned, the world is at the mercy of Russia, Britain, and the United States, regardless of whether we form this league or not.

Stettinius tells us:

If one of these nations ever embarked upon a course of aggression, a major war would result, no matter what the membership and voting provision of the Security Council might be.

And yet at the beginning of the war the solemn declaration was made that the war was being fought to overthrow for all time the false doctrine that might makes right. Commander Stassen warns:

It is of terrific importance that the people of this country and of the world do not feel that they have automatically insured future peace by ratifying the Charter.

All this adds up to a confession of failure, as of course any plan for peace based on force must be. Probably the trouble lies in the fact that those who planned it failed to achieve for their own countries the goals which they presume to chart for the world. The spectacle of a world torn by strife, half its population starving, great areas utterly devastated, a fearful war still raging, while the enslaved conscripted millions of soldiers are effectively barred from a voice in these deliberations, and our own people are regimented well nigh into imbecility, is not one to inspire confidence in the leaders who planned it that way. The present tremendously expanded production of goods proves there is no need for scarcity, but hunger and unemployment breeds dictators, and dictators breed wars.

We mothers who pay the price for life are ready and willing to present a real plan for lasting peace. We believe with the late Gen. Smedley Butler that

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war is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are

reckoned in dollars and the losses of lives.

Says the general, twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor. We agree with him that the way to end this filthy, bloody racket that send boys of 18 to bleed and die on battlefields all over the world is to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The Bible tells us "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall keep ye free." It's that simple. Open the archives; lift the censorship and the light of truth will pierce the fog of fear and confusion that paralyzes the people today. When the truth about the merchants of death, the international financiers, the diplomatic schemers, and the war-gouging profiteers stands revealed, wars will end.

The violation of individual human rights is the starting point for aggression. The recognition of man's inalienable, God-given rights as set forth in our Declaration of Independence must be the cornerstone of any structure for world peace. This must include renouncing military conscription. Let each nation set its own house in order in this repect; let it come seeking justice with clean hands.

In conclusion, I present the following resolution adopted by our organization July 8, 1945:

RESOLUTION OPPOSING RATIFICATION OF UNITED NATIONS CHARTER, ADOPTED BY WOMEN'S LEAGUE FOR POLITICAL EDUCATION JULY 8, 1945 Whereas at this time when our country is still engaged in a fearful war costing untold sacrifice and suffering to millions of men in our armed forces, scattered to the ends of the earth, it is proposed to rush through the Senate of the United States, a United Nations Charter which, while proclaiming its purpose "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," is in fact and essence an instrument to insure our perpetual involvement in future wars, witness the following provisions:

Chapter VII, article 43:

*

"All members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call * * armed forces, assistance and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security."

Chapter VII, article 45:

"In order to enable the United Nations to take urgent military measures, members shall hold immediately available national air-force contingents for combined international enforcement action. The strength and degree of readiness of these contingents and plans for their combined action shall be determined

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