PEACE GROUPS STRIFE RENEWED IN TWO CENTERS AT CAPITAL
Mrs. Potts Fights Congress' Aid to Conference Here in May -- Women's League Quits National Council.
While nine great organizations of women were meeting in national conference here today in combined effort to work out a sufficiently comprehensive program on which all American women may unite in a [cooperative] movement for peace, disintegration and bitter strife broke out afresh in two separate pieces affecting peace bodies not specifically represented in the conference.
[Seething?] in her criticism of certain "pacifistic doctrines," and their "vicious influence" Mrs. Noble Nelson Potts of this city, president of the National Patriotic Council, appeared before the House committee on foreign affairs to oppose passage of the joint resolution which would authorize appropriation to help pay expenses of the sixth quinquennial convention of the International Council of Women to be held here next May.
Mrs. Potts attacked organizations to which she was opposed by name, and personally mentioned, among others, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who is general chairman of the National Conference on the Cause and Cure of War, now in session here at the Washington Hotel, said to represent 5,000,000 American women.
The other development was withdrawal of the United States section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, of which Mrs. Potts is the avowed enemy, from the National Council of Women.
Explains Withdrawal.
The International League for Peace and Freedom, of which Mrs. Jane Addams is president, in announcing its withdrawal said: "We recognize that our program is perhaps too far advanced for some of the organizations of the Council of Women and is one that requires courage and the spirit of the crusader to carry out. ... We are willing to endure the unjust criticism that comes to pioneers in any movement, but we do not wish to force others into a position which is uncomfortable for them."
Explains Platform.
The International League, in its statement, declared its members were "dedicated to live by creative courage and not by destructive fear," explaining in brief its platform as follows:
"World organization for social, political and economic [cooperation]. Moral disarmament through education in the spirit of unity and through the establishment of social justice. World disarmament on the land, on sea and in the air; abolition of the hunger blockade, and of the prostitution of science for destructive purposes."
The letter of withdrawal, written to Mrs. Eva Perry Moore, president of the National Council of Women, was signed by Hannah Clothier Hull, national chairman of the United States section of the league. Miss Amy Woods is secretary of this section, and maintains offices in this city.
The league was among the societies attacked by Mrs. Potts before the House committee today as being affiliated with the International Council of Women meeting here next May.
It was at a meeting of the International League for Peace and Freedom here last year that Mrs. Potts opened her drive against the influences to which she objected, and out of which grew the National Patriotic Council, of which she is now the national president.
Mrs. Potts in her testimony before the House committee pointed out certain "organizational connections of the more prominent of the members of the International Council of Women" which she averred were objectionable to the National Patriotic Council. Among those thus attacked were Mrs. Philip North Moore of St. Louis, national president of the American branch of the International Council of Women; Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, alleged to have been one of the founders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom; Lucia Ames Mead, chairman of the permanent peace committee of the National Council of Women and vice chairman of the National Council for the Prevention of War (of which the executive secretary is Frederick J. Libby of this city); and Miss Mary Anderson, chairman of the committee on industrial relations of the International Council of Women.
Comments