The Massachusetts Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom by a unanimous vote respectfully requests the National Directors to present at the next National biennial meeting their request that action be taken regarding a restatement of the purposes of the International organization. The Massachusetts Board has been dissatisfied with the hasty action taken at the last biennial meeting of the International, held in Washington in 1924. Without discussion, the motion was passed explicitly stating that defensive measures were not be approved.
The Massachusetts Board requests that this statement be dropped for the following reasons: --
1. It has been a distinct handicap to our efforts to extend our membership. Many who would join us willingly in all constructive measures to prevent war, are not willing to say that a nation which is offering to arbitrate a dispute shall not be justified in opposing the armed force of an aggressor who refuses to arbitrate. The Board holds with the framers of the Geneva Protocol that such defense is not synonymous with that use of force which we and the League delegates alike condemn. We rejoice that the clear cut definitions now adopted by all practical workers for peace differentiate sharply between that really offensive warfare which has often been masked under the claim of "defense" and that justifiable defense which, in a remote contingency, might need to be used in order to drive home an acknowledged aggressor. This defense is not opposed by the American group which has been most conspicuous in advocating the Outlawry of War and they have expressly so stated.
In ten years our members have become only 7-8,000. Hundreds of thousands of women in certain other organizations have been either hostile or indifferent to our organization largely through a belief that we were taking an extreme and irrational position. We believe that, while every member may individually take as extreme a position as her judgment dictates, it is unwise to diminish our influence as an organization and arouse unnecessary hostility by taking a position that would condemn the position taken by the framers of the Geneva Protocol. We hope sometime to see its main principles in force and every belligerent aggressor restrained by the public opinion of mankind behind which shall be evident the same type of force as that sanctioned by our Constitution should disorder break out and a state unable to control it. We believe that the [page 2] nonrival, police type of force when used under protective control to repress aggression should not be stigmatized as "war."
2. We are informed that the British Section has never accepted the new statement of purpose formulated at the last biennial. We learn that though the German Section approves, some of the smaller nations reported at the Innsbruck meeting last summer that they found the prohibition of defense a drawback.
We, therefore, urge the Board to recommend to the biennial meeting that the American section [asks] to have the whole matter reopened at the International biennial in Ireland and the whole statement of purpose be revised in harmony with the Geneva Protocol.
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