Speech to the Hyde Park Young Men's Christian Association, March 18, 1928 (excerpts)

Unless the present generation, with the horror of war still fresh, takes drastic steps to prevent future wars, the next generation will see only the glamour and head straight for it, Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, president of the International Congress of Women, declared recently in her annual address to the Hyde Park, Y.M.C.A.

"People act," she said, "as if war was like a cyclone, an inevitable act of God, when as a matter of fact it is nothing of the kind. If people don't want war we don't need to have it."

"It used to be said, 'we have had slavery for thousands of years and will always have it.' But we did away with it. We can also do away with war if we wanted to."

Miss Addams declared that she favored the proposal to outlaw [war] as made to France by Secretary of State Kellogg, as "typically American."

"Europe," she said, "has been trying in various ways to narrow down the possibility of war, through the League of Nations, the world court and the like. It is just like America to propose a new plan outlawing war altogether."

"I am heartily in favor of this new plan, but I do think that it is going to be necessary to continue the educational and moral effort as a supplement to the outlawing of war. It is a tragedy that most churches and other agencies gave up their educational efforts in favor of temperance and prohibition immediately after the passage of the Volstead act."