"Not Personally"

Among the questions answered by persons filling out applications for U. S. citizenship is Question No. 22, asking whether the applicant, if admitted to citizenship, would bear arms for the U. S. In reply to this question Mme. Rosika Schwimmer, organizer of the Henry Ford "peace ship" in 1917, wrote: "Not personally. I understood that women are not required to bear arms in the United States." In view of Mme. Schwimmer's prominence among pacifists, this answer may well have been considered pert by naturalization authorities. At any rate, her application was last week refused (by a Chicago naturalization board) citizenship on grounds that she was "lacking in nationalistic feeling" and also because she had announced herself as an atheist. Her attorney, William B. Gemmill, said he would appeal to the U. S. District Court. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberals have interested themselves in what threatens to become "the Schwimmer Case."

Mme. Schwimmer, a Hungarian, has an international reputation as author, lecturer, pacifist, has frequently accused the U. S. of "militarism." Her eloquence helped in persuading Henry Ford that he could take an ocean trip and stop the World War--a proceeding which was generally felt to have added much to the existent European impression of the U. S. as a country richly peopled with moneyed madmen.