“Helpless and Hopeless”

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 255, 24 July 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

“Helpless and Hopeless”

“Governments, practically without exception, have been extolling peace and proclaiming peace, but their care-fully-planned and appallingly costly preparations for wars have gone on apace. “On the other hand, there exists in practically every land, and in some lands to a very large and influential extent, a deep-seated popular sentiment against war.' “The reason why this strong and widely-distributed popular sentiment counts for so little in controlling public policy is that for the most part it contents itself with emotional outgivings and outbursts. It is opposed to war; it will not’ countenance war; it will take no part in war; it will permit no one to make economic gain out of war; but it is singularly hopeless and helpless when confronted with the task, first, of lessening and then removing the causes of war, and, second, of building up those public institutions of co-operation and judicial process which are the only possible substitute for war.

“If governments could only be made to understand that the public opinion of their several peoples is not only opposed to war, but is definitely insistent upon policies of social, economic and political co-operation and of substituting judicial process for threat of force in the settlement of international differences, then progress would be made.”—Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, writing in the report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.