Peace Plans

Last week National Peace Conference, an organization of some 30 peace societies, sent President Roosevelt a protest, signed by 450 churchmen, educators and businessmen, against "unprecedented" U. S. military expenditures. Also last week, by an amoeba-like proliferation which pacifist and religious movements often undergo, part of the personnel of the National Peace Conference made ready to launch an ambitious two-year Emergency Peace Campaign. In its first year the campaign plans to spend between $500,000 and $1,000,000, of which it has raised $150,000. Acting as treasurer of the campaign is the American Friends Service Committee, that fortunate Quaker board to which Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt has given the $90,000 proceeds of her radio talks. Mrs. Roosevelt will help the campaign when it opens on April 21 by joining in a radio program with its star speaker, stubble-cheeked old George Lansbury, British Laborite, who will tour 20 U. S. cities during April and May. Other campaign plans: speaking tours by teams of pacifists; Peace Caravans of Youths; a monster demonstration of peace workers in Washington on the eve of the opening of Congress next year.

When a Commission on the Coordination of Efforts for Peace was founded two years ago. with President Ernest Hatch Wilkins of Oberlin College at its head, it bogged at the start in attempting to list all the U. S. anti-war organizations. In Manhattan alone there are some 200 pacifist groups including the Peace Patriots, the New York Committee for the Struggle against War, the Penny Fund for Peace ("40,000,000 Pennies from 40,000,000 Women & Children"). But the 30-odd U. S. peace organizations which amount to anything belong to the National Peace Conference. When not engaged in special efforts such as the drive begun last week, this group spends some $500,000 a year plus a small grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Its secretary is Dr. Walter William Van Kirk, a 44-year-old Methodist who has been Secretary of the Department of International Justice & Goodwill of the Federal Council of Churches for the past ten years. Currently Dr. Van Kirk is preparing a "master file" of U. S. peace-lovers' names.

Most businesslike of U. S. peace groups is World Peaceways, whose guiding spirit is a dynamic, blue-eyed, brown-haired grandmother named Mrs. Estelle Miller Sternberger. In Manhattan last week Mrs. Sternberger received the Jewish Forum's Albert Einstein Peace Award for her pacifist achievements over two decades. Operating on an annual $100,000 budget. World Peaceways puts its faith in free advertising. In FORTUNE two years ago appeared the first of a series of World Peaceways full-page ads, written by Bruce Barton. Now prepared by Young & Rubicam, the campaign has reached the point, projected several years ago, "where we would dare to introduce a little ridicule." A recent World Peaceways page showed a disabled veteran, with the caption: "Hello, sucker!"

The National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War and the New History Society are also ruled from the distaff side. The former, whose honorary chairman is Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, is a coalition of female societies. It is currently sponsoring discussion groups or "Marathon Round Tables." The New History Society, founded by Mrs. Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, is an offshoot of the Bahai Religion. Mrs. Chanler and her peace-loving friends belong to the "Green International" wear green shirts when participating in peace demonstrations.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, with 10,000 U. S. members, became involved in doctrinaire controversy two years ago when a minority of its members favored fighting in the Class War. The National Council for Prevention of War has an able Washington lobbyist in Frederick Joseph Libby. Last autumn it sought contributions by means of a $1,000,000 "issue" of "peace bonds." The issue did not go well, although one anonymous woman bought $69,000 worth. The World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches seeks to promote world harmony by international exchanges of pastors. It recently heckled the Pope for seeming to side with his fellow-countryman in the Italo-Ethiopian War (TIME, Oct. 21 ). The Women's International League, for Peace & Freedom, a favorite cause of the late Jane Addams, is trying to get 50,000,000 signatures throughout the world, 12,000,000 in the U. S., to a People's Mandate to Governments to End War.

Numerous as peace organizations are, the number of U. S. peace-lovers who do nate money directly to them is probably not more than 30,000.

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