Pressure Groups

Dorothy Thompson was never married to a U. S. President, but her writings receive almost as wide attention throughout the land as do those of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt (see col. 1). Miss Thompson's husband, Novelist Sinclair Lewis, in his most famed book, Main Street, reached fewer U. S. voters than Miss Thompson reaches daily in her syndicated column On The Record (audience: 7,000,000). Last week Dorothy Thompson picked up a phrase by Herbert Hoover--"Ideas cannot be cured with battleships"--and retorted: "Ideas can certainly be spread and suppressed by the sword. . . . The spreading of ideas by economic sanctions--i.e., force--has already too deeply penetrated this democracy."

Preoccupation with war, and "doing something about it," has given rise to pressure groups whose target is the White House. Dorothy Thompson heads one of these.

Thompsonites. With her background of eight years as a correspondent in Vienna and Berlin before the rise of Adolf Hitler, Dorothy Thompson last December joined Publicists Herbert Sebastian Agar (Louisville Courier-Journal) and Hamilton Fish Armstrong (Foreign Affairs) in composing a "Re-Declaration of American Faith" to which, on Benjamin Franklin's birthday (January 17), the National Student Federation set out to obtain "several million'' signatures. First they signed up 63 Big Names, including such diverse characters as William Allen White, William Green, Marshall Field III, Al Smith. Central proposition of their manifesto is an inverted declaration of war: "Today our people are the objects of undeclared, but not unavowed, wars. . . . The challenge has not come from us. But since it has come, we accept it.

". . . We declare that to keep alive these truths that are the sense and substance of our being, we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Hollywood was the scene of another rewriting of the Declaration of Independence. Film Director Herbert Biberman, shooting a picture at San Pedro Harbor, watched a boat loading scrap iron for Japan. It occurred to him that it takes something besides bandages for China to fight scrap iron for Japan, and that the peaceful artisans of Hollywood have most to lose from the world rise of militarism and dictatorship. He talked with Actors Melvyn Douglas and Edward G. Robinson. They all talked with Clark Eichelberger, a League of Nations advocate and chairman of the Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts. After a series of parlor parleys in the best Hollywood manner, they emerged with a "Declaration of Democratic Independence," phrased with care not to desecrate the original, in which they petitioned the President and Congress of the United States to break off all trade relations with Germany. Tops among 56 original Signers of this document were names to thrill millions of cinemagoers: Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Joan Bennett, Myrna Loy, etc., etc. In other cities, other groups of 56 signers are being formed. Less glamorous names represented New York, including Helen Keller, Carrie Chapman Catt, Mary E. Woolley. Excerpts from their Declaration of trade war, to which they propose obtaining 20,000,000 signatures :

"We accuse the leaders of Nazi Germany, as a ruler was accused in 1776, of a design to reduce the world under absolute despotism. . . .'

"... They bring chaos and disunity into sovereign nations and then seize and dismember them. They send their agents to spy upon us. They organize Bunds to spread their vicious doctrines in strident contempt for our Democracy and its institutions. . . .

". . . We, a free people, have continued to support by trade and commerce this enemy of our liberty and our peace. This, our conscience will permit no longer."

Christians to take a personal pledge to boycott German goods, boats and territory are being rounded up by a committee suggested by Christopher T. Emmet Jr. of Stony Brook, L. I., headed by Dr. William Jay Schieffelin of Manhattan's Citizens' Union, assisted by Presidents Henry Noble MacCracken of Vassar College and Frank P. Graham of University of North Carolina, President Oliver La Farge of the American Association on Indian Affairs, Editor Guy Emery Shipler of the Churchman, et al.

Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt added her voice to the chorus of the pressure groups last fortnight when, in Washington, she addressed the Conference on the Cause & Cure of War (representing 6,000,000 women) in terms which could easily have been construed as downright belligerent. Said she: "I think we ought to urge upon our own people a strict examination of themselves, to say to them, 'What are you willing to give up from a material standpoint, to keep the world at peace? And what are you willing to do to bring your moral support to bear in favor of what you think is right?'

"I wonder whether we have decided to hide behind Neutrality? It is safe, perhaps, but I am not sure that it is always right to be safe."

The C. on the C. & C. of W. thereupon voted, 296-to-5, to "indict the Neutrality Law," urge its amendment so as to effect discrimination against treaty-breakers.

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