ACTION FOR PEACE
Jack, Homer A.
Action For Peace By Homer A. Jack ON that dark day just after the headlines announced that President Truman was contemplating the use of the atomic bomb, four church peace workers gathered...
...The Vigil, coming in the middle of the Truman-Attlee conference, caught the fancy of the public and the press and the Chicago newspapers gave the Vigil unusual publicity...
...Before the afternoon was out, an llth-hour, 11-hour Prayer Vigil for Peace had been planned...
...Temporary offices have been set up at 431 South Dearborn St...
...that present inflationary trends, stimulated by the military DR...
...E. Raymond Wilson of the Friends Committee on National Legislation came from Washington to advise the Conference...
...in Chicago and the initiating members are contributing a dollar a week toward expenses...
...Despite little advance notice, more than 1,000 Chicagoans of all faiths came to pray under the guidance of 22 clergymen and laymen, including poet Edith Lovejoy Pierce and writer Milton Mayer...
...to increase greatly and immediately our economic aid to underdeveloped areas through the United Nations...
...to bring our domestic and international practices into line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
...6 in the chapel of Chicago Temple...
...The Crusade will not in itself stop war, but it will arrest the despair of Chicagoans who previously had no place to turn for constructive help in expressing their disapproval of a war-bound American foreign policy...
...The immediate seven-point program of the Chicago Crusade is as follows: We call upon our government to give bold, imaginative leadership to stop the drift toward war and to this end —to make continuous and patient attempts to negotiate the problems of the cold war and existing differences with all countries, wherever possible through the United Nations...
...and —that our present foreign policy relies too much on military force...
...After much discussion, it was decided to set up the Chicago Crusade for Peace with Justice (only probably with a more attractive title...
...And so the Chicago Crusade for Peace with Justice has been formed with frustration turned into action by necessity—and a leap of faith...
...It was held Dec...
...Delegates pointed out that Americans in 1950, unlike 1940, had few organizations to help them act to keep the nation's foreign policy from courting war...
...Movies of the Vigil were run over television and some of the prayers were carried to many states on press service wires...
...Brien McMahon, former Sen...
...At this organizing conference, delegates pounded out a provisional policy statement indicating both the axioms on which any program for peace with justice would rest and then the specific immediate action program which would be advocated...
...This organization would be broad enough to unite pacifists and non-pacifists, socialists and non-socialists, world federalists and non-federalists, but it would be clearly free from Communist orientation— and control...
...There is no scarcity of peace plans—including those of the Quakers, Sen...
...that both Russia and the United States share in the responsibility for the alarming drift toward war...
...Action For Peace By Homer A. Jack ON that dark day just after the headlines announced that President Truman was contemplating the use of the atomic bomb, four church peace workers gathered in-Chicago's loop in utter despair and frustration...
...The axioms in the preamble are as follows: We, a group of concerned Chicagoans, believe —that war is neither desirable nor inevitable...
...that peace, with justice, is still possible...
...HOMER A. JACK, minister of the Unitarian Church of Evanston, 111., was chairman of the organizing Conference for Peace with Justice...
...program, threaten the stability of our domestic economic institutions...
...Sixty-seven persons—clergymen, students, scientists, housewives—celebrated the end of the old year by discussing the advisability of forming a new, broad Chicago area organization for peace...
...to achieve universal disarmament, of atomic and conventional weapons, through continuous United Nations inspection and control...
...to hasten the end of colonialism and the extension of self-government to dependent peoples...
...that all forms of totalitarianism —communist, fascist, and others—are contrary to the basic principles of democracy for which we stand...
...to increase support of the United Nations and its specialized agencies and to work for the development of the United Nations into a genuine world government...
...A continuing committee called a Chicago Conference for Peace with Justice which was held all day Dec...
...that our traditions of freedom of speech, association, and criticism must be maintained...
...30 in Chicago's loop...
...Millard Tydings, Walter Reu-ther, James P. Warburg, String-fellow Barr, and the various federalist proposals—but there is little integration of these plans on a grassroots, organizational level...
...that modern war will result in the extension of totalitarian^ ism irrespective of the military outcome...
...and —to make membership in the United Nations universal...
Vol. 15 • February 1951 • No. 2
