THE ABOLITION OF WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21906, 15 September 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE ABOLITION OF WAR

FORTY MILLION WOMEN DEMAND WORLD PEACE

World peace is the first demand of the 40 million women in the 42 countries represented at the International Council, of Women which opened in Paris last month. No social, economic or educational building of a new world can go on without a guarantee of security for growth and expansion. The council contends that sex barriers must go, not only because they tend to exclude women from certain fundamental rights enjoyed by men, but because they tend to suggest those differences and divisions between men and women which ultimately underlie and support differences and divisions between classes and nations. The council seeks equality of the sexes in education, in moral standards, in the right to earn, in the right of free collaboration of men and women in legislative and administrative bodies. Jt was decided that women should dedicate themselves to the supreme task of surmounting barriers of race, creed, caste, and nationality and of promoting international reconciliation and goodwill.

Such a comprehensive programme leaves little room for comment, but, ambitious as it sounds, a council of women which has succeeded in establishing link's of mutual goodwill between 42 countries has already taken a long step toward the attainment of its ideals of welding the nations of the world into a sensible federation in which war will be regarded as a relic of barbarism. The majority of men, of course, regard such a munificent ideal as utterly impossible of attainment, l.hey are openly derisive, bitter, cynical, tolerantlv amused or merely sad at the mev'table disillusionment which they believe to be in store for the whole misguided feminine sex, with its ludicrous hopes. But after all, in the past men have been equally cynical, contemptous, pessimistic about the possibility of women's ever accomplishing many feats which to-day are commonplace. And in the second place, the Pan-Pacific conference likewise bore eloquent testimony to the fact that women everywhere. all over the world, are absolutely united in their determination to do all thev can to prevent war and the making* of armaments for private profit. And there is really quite a large nroportion of women in the world even fortv million ought surely to make I themselves felt sufficiently to be taken seriouslv at least! Finallv. isn't there at least something finer and more courageous about an honest attempt to do somethmc to destrov the monster of War than there is about a mere passive acceptance of that which man is pleased to call rate.'