"No More War"

No More War

Last week Secretary of War Dern went to Philadelphia to help celebrate the 17th anniversary of the establishment of that city's Ordnance Department, view an exhibit of armament in Reyburn Plaza opposite the City Hall. By the time the Secretary's visit was over he had been made thoroughly conscious of militant pacifism as practiced by Philadelphia Quakers. When he arrived at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel to speak at a dinner, he found young Quakers picketing the street, bearing placards such as: WAR IS ALWAYS WRONG and ARMAMENTS REPRESENT DEATH TO YOU BUT DIVIDENDS TO THE PRIVATE FIRMS. When, in Reyburn Plaza, Mr. Dern made a brief speech and played at aiming a 3-in. anti-aircraft gun, Quakers distributed anti-war leaflets to the crowd while a chartered airplane overhead rained down more printed matter. Few days later, after the Secretary of War was well out of the way, the Quakers held a meeting of their own in the Plaza, exhibited a model of a dinosaur ("All Armor Plate --No Brains").

Philadelphia Quakers are by no means the only religious folk currently to become alarmed over the martial world in which they live. Largely because so many of them were stampeded into helping fight the last war with word and deed, a substantial number of U. S. clergymen are bending their efforts to keep the nation, or at least themselves, out of the next one. Recent examples:

P: Last month Frederick J. Libby, one-time Congregational minister, executive secretary of the National Council for Prevention of War, declared he detected danger in five steps the U. S. is taking this year. The five: "Our provocative naval maneuvers in the Pacific; the proposed expenditure of more than one billion dollars this year on the Army and Navy for purely military purposes; the refusal of the U. S. to join with Japan in seeking a 50% cut in navies; motion pictures which, under the direction of some influential source, seem deliberately to be stirring up a war spirit toward Japan; the almost daily warnings against Japan which appear in the newspapers."

The naval maneuvers, which are to take place next month involving 177 ships and 447 airplanes and encompassing 5.000,000 sq. mi. of seaways, cause churchmen the greatest alarm. Against them Editor Edmund B. Chaffee published an "Open Letter to the President" in his Presbyterian Tribune. The Christian Century editorialized vigorously. The Department of International Justice and Goodwill of the Federal Council of Churches came out with a forthright protest to the President signed by 200 churchfolk, including some of the ablest bishops, pastors, religious editors, missionary leaders and pedagogs in the land. Rev. Harry Frederick Wrard, Union Theological Seminary professor, declared in a sermon that during the maneuvers might occur the "incident" that would bring on the Japanese war which, said he, the U. S. is courting. Finally, to the chorus which up to this week had elicited only polite acknowledgments in Washington was added the voice of Sherwood Eddy, able Y. M. C. A. man, author of many a book on the Orient. To 400 preachers and pedagogs he sent a letter in which he objected not to naval maneuvers in general but to holding any part of them in the Aleutian Islands--about 400 miles from Japan.

P:. In Buffalo, 83 ministers and rabbis signed a pledge that they would "never again, directly or indirectly, support an-other war."

P: In Manhattan the Caravan, youth section of the New History Society which is a pacifist offshoot of the Bahai religion, celebrated its sixth birthday with a ball at which was sung a new song called "No More War." Chorus:

See on the night A New Dawn is playing; And far above all nations, The people's flag is flying--WHITE And we have heard a call That was never raised before, And we're making camp FOR NO MORE WAR.

P: Finally, clergymen everywhere tingled to the words of Pope Pius XI, who addressed a consistory of cardinals in Vatican City this week (see p. 36), said in Latin: "We consider it would be a horrible crime, a foolish manifestation of wrath, if peoples again took arms one against the other to spill blood, brothers against brothers, so that destruction and ruin would be sown from the skies, on land and at sea. ... If anybody should commit this nefarious crime--and may the Almighty put far from us this sad forecast which we on our part believe will not come to pass--then we cannot help but appeal again to Almighty God with this prayer from saddened souls:

" 'Confound those peoples who desire war.' "

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