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Nottrnkraker, Amaterdam CALL TO PEACE Jewry s Efforts to End the Futility of War By Bertram Jonas Jlitn the armistice ending the World War was signed on November 11, 101S, there was a widespread feeling that we had seen the last of war. The creation of the League of Nations in 1920 reinforced the belief that a new era of international amity had dawned, that never again would nations take up arms against each other. That the World War was not a “war to end war" and that the Treaty of "Versailles was a document pregnant with the hatreds that breed new wars are things we have learned from the history of the last fifteen years. Despite the League of Na tions, the Locarno pact, the Kellogg treaty outlawing war, the innumerable disarmament conferences, the tremendous outpouring <>f public support for measures to take the profits out of war and the unmistakable evidence that the peoples of the world want peace, the 17th anniversary of the armistice finds the world once more on tlie road to war. While the states men talk of peace they prepare for war. Millions are starving and the nations spend billions for armaments. Everywhere there is fear of a new catastrophe which will engulf mankind and perhaps destroy civilization. Although we stand on the brink of what may be another world war it is not because the forces for peace have been silent or inactive. For nearly fifteen years high-minded and devoted men and women throughout the world have doggedly mobilized public opinion in support of measures designed to outlaw war. it is no fault of their’s that the dogs of war are again straining at the leash. The first post-war effort to prevent war through international action was the League of Nations. Although this body has by no means been the success its founders expected it has nevertheless served as a restraining influence on those who would resort to war. It is worth noting therefore that since 1920 a number of nations have been represented in the league by Jews. Paul Hymans, for many years Bel gium's foreign minister, served with Woodrow Wilson on the committee which made the original draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations. When the League was called into being in 1920 Ilymans was elected the first president of the Assembly. Since then he has sat in at every international conference and his voice has always been raised in support of peace. The late Karl Melchior, one of Ger many's leading economists, was for years a member of the Reich's delegation to the League. Max Solweitehik and Dr. Simon Ashkenazy represented Lithuania and Poland respectively on the Council of the League. Long before the Soviet l nion became a member of the League, Maxim Litvinov, her foreign minister, had achieved international fame as an advrreate of world peace through his startling proposals for immediate and universal disarmament. His energetic and successful promotion of non aggression pacts with almost all of Russia’s neighbors challenged world admiration. By his direct and frank method of speaking and by his refusal to be trapped into the usual tricks of diplomacy, Litvinov became the recog nized spokesman of the proponents of peace " The Dogf of JTiir /train <il Hu lc>uh. ,> when the Soviet l.’nion entered the league. Twice he has been proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize. Five years before the League of Nations was established and while the world was still in the throes of war, Salmon (). Levinson, then a suc cessful Chicago corporation lawyer, conceived the idea of making war an international crime. In 19IK he launched a one-man war against war with an article culled “The Legal Status of W ar" in which he outlined a plan for out lawing war by international treaty. Working single-handed to build up public opinion in favor of his plan, he coined the phrase “out lawry of war” and labored tirelessly to win key men to his idea. In 1929 he gained his first success when Senator Borah, chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations, offered his historic resolution in the Senate to outlaw war. Neglecting his business to commute be tween Chicago and Washington, with side trips to the capitals of Europe, Ix;vinson estab lished important contacts, carried on a vast correspondence and worked with leading figures. During all this phenomenal effort he raised no funds, invited no subscriptions, enrolled no members, subsidized no agencies and launched no publications. But he did succeed in getting Presidents Harding and Cool idge to use the phrase “outlawry of war” in their messages. Then he created the American Committee for the Outlawry of War to carry on the work more impersonally, l ltimately his work bore fruit in the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1929 when the representatives of (50 nations put their names to a document which branded war an international crime and supposedly outlawed it forever. Levinson was the only private citizen present when this treaty was signed. In 1929 and 1930, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. When it began to l>e obvious that neither the League of Nations nor the Kellogg-Briand Pact was fool-proof in preventing war, the peace forces decided that other tactics were required. Four years ago Mrs. Theresa Mayer Durlach founded World Peace Posters out of her conviction that the purposes of peace move ments can be realized only through a program that reached the masses. Since then Sirs. Durlach’s organization (.Please turn to Page 16) * THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE 191