TOSSING WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 310, 31 December 1940, Page 5

TOSSING WORLD.

AS WOMEN SEE IT. ONLY HOPE OF PEACE. MORE THAN VICTORY. (By IRA WOLFERT.) NEW YORK, November 25. Beclaring "the human race must have its chance to live," Carrie Chapman Catt to-night told the 300 delegates to the Women's Centennial Congress here, over which she presides ae chairman, "we could not do better than to make the aim of the next 100 years' plan the abolition of war." Although pledging herself to fight the Nazis, whom ehe described as a threat to civilisation, and if fighting fails, to rebel against their 'tyranny," Mrs. Catt declared she saw no hope of permanent peace rising' from a victory by England. "The promiee of another century of wars, each* one-more gruesome than the last, aeemS' -clearly outlined," she said, and added, *war will mat be stopped by the superficial effort of what is little more than, wisMul hoping. There must be a plan with every iiaw covered and with a. nmty. wise men «nd women behind it * Mrs. Catt gave no specific ehape tc the plan, except to point out "whatever you plan for the future, in the name oi peace, remember that "your work will be useless unless you provide the means foi suppressing every man who dreams oi empire." A Mothers' Gestapo. For this ehe recommended "an inter national mothers' gestapo, whose busi nese it will 'be to hunt out the work empire dreamers in infancy and apply officially andr with dignity, the latelj improved i*penkin©jJnaehine.'' 0b& •x^yntfny I '^yfT^Hw*a*<»ntJi*w» r ■ wlaebsfei

the Congress on Wednesday, a declaration of purposes will be voted on. Members of five commissions have been at work on this for ten months and the intention ie to make the declaration broad and constructive enough to enable women throughout the world to rally behind it.

At the banquet which officially opened the congress women from foreign nations gave the delegates a picture of a world tossing in critical,illness. Mrs. Sun I-Chung spoke for China. She told of the confiscatory methods by which the Japanese ensure "complete economic domination of every inch of ground they are able to put under their fe«t," and declared: "The invaders seem to be intent on destroying the Chinese race." Opium and heroin were the weapons used for this latter objective, Mrs. Sun I-Chung said. In the parts of China Dccupied by the Japanese these, narcotics iave . become Government monopolies. They are kept from the Japanese but the Chinese are encouraged to use them. Totalitarian Aims. "Often," Mrs. Sun I-Chung declared, 'people are tricked into the use of nar:otics. Some makers of cigarettes purposely put heroin into the cheap tobacco ind habitual smokers of that blend slowly become addicts without even knowing it." Ana Rosa de Martinez Guerrero, chairman of the Inter-American Commission >f Women, Argentina, told the delegates America could "preserve the treasures of i-ivilisation" only if it solved its economic problems and halted "the infiltration of totalitarian ideals." "I do not believe that invasion of the Americas is part of the totalitarian programme," she said. "But I do believe that an attempt is being made to create a favourable situation for the installation of governments of force that are in favour of totalitarian methode." Senora Kiierrwo concluded by saying: "The women of America must insist on a permanent union of the Americas based on strong commercial treaties."* Another speaker was Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, United States Minister to Korway, who welcomed the foreign visitors to the congress. She. pointed out that the war, in uniting many "diverse ethnic groups or isolated nations" &££BSpD&t# ' -33l J - <?lHMMy»fr'lßfcfly H FTi' JfßCly : '■ ■ Iμ ilikffttj town the TwifewWf *p»e§nifiee istwrP peculiar custam^ , jjpp^feei

Mrs. Harriman ended on one of the! few notes of hope. "If times were never worse," she said, "does it not come to you, in little gusts of expectation, that possibilities were never greater?" She. added: "I think that we have come far; but 1 know, too, that we are travelling faet and farther. The modern world its beginning to be and we shall all be of it."—X.A.X.A.