The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1938-06-17
RE-HEADLINING THE NEWS
F. B. B.

want homes for our families not
tents ON pattlefields.!"
At last this is the way the rank
and file of the people are beginning
to talk about war. At last they are
beginning to think of war not as
something which prevents our hav-
ing peace" but as some thing which
prevents our having all the things
which as human beings we most
want, Jobs, home, health and educa-
ton, safety for our children, free
dom and plenty. This was the key
note of all that was said by the
thousands of delegates attending the
Keep, America Out of War Congress
which met in Washington last week.
And when 1 sat down at my desk
this morning, at the top of my mail
l found peace poster from Eng
land which says the same thing.
Feed people, don't bomb them," it
says. Meet the needs of hungry ma
tions, raise the general standard OF
life," it urges. Then / open a new
book, Seven Shifts" collection
of interviews with seven laboring
men, and this sentence written by
a plasterer was the first to catch my
attention: 1--WE don't want the couh-
try to become a bloody country or
the world a bloody w-rld, we want
the earth to be plowed and the corn
10 grow and things to be built"
Sooner or later this demand of the
people will force governments to CO.
operate in meeting the real needs OF
their people. To do it they will have
to stop thinking of war as an answer
to either national or International
problems. When they have done it
the causes of war will have very
largely disappeared, and the hold Of
dictators will be broken, for dicta-
tors are accepted only by people wnc
despair
Such cooperation is urged i'm the
plan known as the Van iceland Re-
port issued some months ago and
based on a study of world condi-
tons made by Paul Van iceland,
Premier of Belgium. Neither this
nor any other government paid the
attention that should have been paid
to this report which urged a lower
ing of trade barriers, international
control of colonies, arrangements
for loans and financial assistance to
countries needing them, and, to
bring these things about, world &C.
onomic conference. Resolutions have
been introduced in the British Par
lament, in the Canadian Parliament
and in our own Congress, for such
Conference and for fuller considera-
Such efforts do not get the popular
support that they should have be-
cause all of these economic quest
tions are difficult questions little un-
derstood by the public, but govern
ments will call conference and will
cooperate to bring about better eco
nomic conditions if the people will
just keep saying, I'VE want jobs not
graves. We want homes not tents
on battlefields."
Optimists are usually scorned---
which reminds me, as someone once
said, that this would be pleasanter
world if only 'the good were less
harsh to the clever and the clever
less rude to the good" But to go
back to the optimists it seems to me
| that anyone who has cheerful
thought about the present state OF
| the world is entitled to express it..
Here is one growing out of perhaps
the greatest tragedy of our times,
the fact that there are today thous-
ands of homeless refugees wandering
the earth, many of them young men
and women. Because of their wan
kind promises to be preserved little
longer and new sections of the earth
made productive Already they have
set up one pioneering community in
South America. The government of
Columbia is making it possible fer
European exiles to start over again
and build themselves new home.
With all the courage of cur own
ancestors who first came to America
they are undertaking to clear land,
much of it covered with a tangled
growth fifteen to twenty feet high.
With the help. so far. OF only one OK
they are blowing, and, with seed
sent them by the peace organizations
|of England, they are planting the
land. AS this first group becomes
established, they will be able to re-
ceieve others and funds are now be-
ing raised to increase the commun-