PEACE PLEDGE UNION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 102, 3 May 1939, Page 8

PEACE PLEDGE UNION

MOVEMENT IN BRITAIN

The members of the Peace Pledge Union met in the Friends' Hostel last week, and after dealing with correspondence and greetings, and the problems of the labouring class in Great Britain, listened to a talk on "The Peace Pledge Union in Great Britain" by the Rev. B. Dowling. Mr. Dowling traced the history of the movement in Britain, which, he said, was started by the Rev. Canon "Dick" Sheppard in 1934. Within a few months of its creation it had 50,000 members who were pledged to renounce war and never support another. These members included Canon Morris Lord Ponsonby, George Lanbury. George MacLeod, Donald Soper, Dr. Alex Wood, Canon Raven. Middleton Murry, Aldous Huxley, and Philip Mumford. The crisis in September last greatly affected the people in England, and they were beinj told the same old "stories" that were told before and during the last war. It was remarkable to think that people had such poor memories. Motor-cars, fitted with loud-speakers, patrolled the streets, and the people queued up for gas masks at shops and depots. The effect on the people of propaganda was similar to the panic of the last war, and men threw themselves into the fetish of doing without thinking. The nation was being asked to submit to a machine, as powerful as th< Fascist organisation, and become in reality part of a military State. "Armament is war," said Mr. Dowling, "and it is the fostering method of war psychology." The Peace Pledge Union members vowed to have nothing to do with the evil of war, and to do everything in their power to create peace which was to be sacrificing, just, and permanent.

The speaker ended with i review of economic conditions in Great Britain and said he saw in the sufferings of the people the contradiction of the Government in desiring to save lives by an expensive and negative waste in A.R.P., etc., and yet maintaining over eighteen million people on the borderline of starvation.