Evening star., 1932-03-06

him in the hearts and respect
Il L and admiration of American
women for all time to come
The man is former United States
Ambassador to Germany and Great
Britain Alanson B. Houghton, and the
suggestion is that we make it law
that our Nation can never again go
to war without the consent Of the
voters.
How simple it sounds. And, like all
miracles how tremendous it is.
Fer this seems to me a miracle.
Women have been wondering about
this very point ever since they were
given citizenship and responsibility in
national affairs. but women have a
way of wondering and deciding that
that's Just the way men always have
done things and always will do them
and letting it go at that.
But here is man wondering, too,
and a man with power and a voice.
And he puts into concrete form what
thousands of us, millions of us, have
been trying to think out. trying to
say-he says calmly and simply that
inasmuch as nations are often thrown
into war against their wills, a constl-
tutional provision should be made that
the legislative and executive branches
of government may not declare war
without the consent of the voters"
Well hear q lot more of this before
We get through But right now l
want to assure Mr.. Houghton that
such a measure would have practically
unanimous support from the women OF
America. There may be isolated wom-
en-. here and there. who for some COM
pletely incomprehensible reason might
not vote for it. but they would be so
few and so unimportant that they
wouldn't count The women of Amer
lea will put your bill through for you,
Mr. Houghton. if you will give them
a chance.
WHEN we were all working for suf-
w frage Is years ago there we're
few women. and some of them rich
and influential, who felt that We would
be lowering our standards Of finenesS,
femininity, ignorance and helpleSsness
if we we're once enfranchiSed and as
they valued all these things. they ac-
tually fought the nineteenth amend
ment-paid salaries, published propa-
ganda, rented headquarters in the Cap
ital and otherwise showed that they
meant what they said.
What happened to these organiza-
tions I don't know; one hears nothing
of them now.
In the same way there are militaris-
tic organizations Of women. They like
the idea that to the glorious strains of
martial music, under the Stars and
Stripes blowing upon the breeze, our
splendid men may rush to glorious
victories, put down the oppressor and
defend the right.
That few confused and half-hearted
yrtI,A fbiv,lyiy10 al lNs,aacfia
discomfort and foreign investments
blunder into war, and then can't get
out, and that magnificent boys who
were all at school together in Heidel-
berg or oxford or Princeton then find
themselves enemies, find themselves
cold, lonely. forgotten, misdirected,
heartsick and hungry in muddy trenches
reinforced with the bodies of their COM
rades, that all their valor is nothing
against the scientific destruction that
one airplane, one submarine, one gas
bomb can launch. seems to escape en-
tirely the comprehension of these war
like ladies They go right on visualizing
Gen. Lee and Gen. Sherman, gallant
figures on horseback, riding at the head
OF their troops
I EE and Sherman are dead, and all
- their horses are dead, and old
fashioned war, with its glory and beauty
and courage, is dead, too. The fine
men, the good men, on both sides, in
the World War, wanted only one thing
they wanted-w-ith what longing and
heartSickneSs and WEAKNESS they wanted
just to go homel English, Germans
Americans, they knew they weren't put
ting down the oppressor and making
the world safe for democracy they
knew they were breeding infinite
agonies, creating unbearable burdens for
the generations to come. They wanted
only to be friends, to stop killing. to
go home
Read their letters their diaries, their
stories of the Great War, and find that
despairing confused, hopeless note over
and over again.
No one at the head of affairs" that
Is. at the beginning of the war in 1914,
quite meant war at that stage 1t
was something into which they glided,
or rather staggered and stumbled, per-
haps through folly. A discussion.
have no doubt, would have averted it."
Who Is this speaking? This is Mr..
Lloyd-George Of England, and every
other authority that I have ever been
able to find, Barnes, Gray, Wells, Blunt,