Jesse Halsey / Radio Address c1935
The World Court
protocols have again failed to pass our Senate. If the prestige of a President,
who can get a blank check for four billion, could not bring the Senators into
line, what can? Apparently, a “barrage of telegrams” is more effective than the
influence of the Chief Executive.
Anyone who
listened to Father Couglin or Senator Reynolds or Huey Long, when they were on
the air, realized, as never before, the awful power of the radio in the hands
of propagandists, not to say demagogues.
(I realize it is
very easy to call the other fellow bad names.) If we are to change the picture,
we must, in the future, not take anything for granted; but begin to organize
our forces and be prepared to make vocal, in Washington, such public opinion as
we can create and direct. This presupposes a consistent policy of education in
the cities and at the crossroads, to proclaim the ideals of brotherhood and the
international implications of the Gospel, to make “Americanism” something more
than a narrow nationalism, to take the best idealistic traditions of our
history and to exalt them.
Whoever is
responsible for the policies of mission study deserves credit for placing the
emphasis on Japan for this year. With current increase in armaments and our
naval gestures in the Pacific, it is of great value for the churches to be
studying and trying to understand Japan. Certainly, it is but a drop in the bucket, but, as a wise woman said, “The place
for the drop is in the bucket.”
The Senators
from Ohio voted on opposite sides on the World Court. The day following the
vote, from Washington comes a dispatch to our morning paper, intimating that
the anti-Senator has been deluged with telegrams of congratulations whereas the
pro-court Senator had received no congratulatory messages. However large the
“barrage” of anti telegrams may have been, eight names are mentioned in our
paper. None of them happens to be known to me (and I have lived in our town for
over twenty years). However, an array of fifty or sixty names of our “leading
citizens” appear on the letterhead of our World Court Organization. None of us
apparently have wired and, likely, few have written, either congratulating our
pro-Court Senator or criticizing our anti. I imagine that is symptomatic the
country over.
It is our
business to sow the seed and plant the leaven, but on occasion it seems
necessary that we count our sheaves or bake our loaves of bread. In other
words, put pressure where it will make votes in Washington, or, quite frankly,
engage in straight-forward, above-board “lobbying.” For our encouragement in
this dark time when we desperately need it, let me rehearse in brief a bit of
history that ought to give us hope and teach us some lessons.
President Nicholas
Murray Butler [of Columbia University], after spending some time with Premier
Briand, came home and, in a Sunday evening address to less than four hundred
citizens at an eastern summer resort, outlined in substance what we now know as
the “Pact of Paris.” A small committee of citizens selected that night went to
Washington. President Coolidge and Secretary Kellogg thought the plan
impossible and “unconstitutional.” Senator Borah said that he “would not oppose
it”; and there it seemed to stall.
A Roman Catholic
member of this citizen’s committee said to the others that the only method of
approach was through the Federal Council. They saw Dr. Cadman and started the
Council’s machinery and as it became evident that individuals and groups the
country over were interested, the plan began to take form. Its unilateral
feature became multilateral, and other minor changes were introduced, but under
the pressure of public interest in high places, it became possible and
constitutional and, curiously enough, in most quarters it now bears the name of
the “Kellogg Pact.”
Apparently, we
do have the machinery to make vocal our idealism. None of us say that the
League of Nations is a synonym for the Kingdom of God nor that the World Court
will bring universal peace, but we do feel ashamed and humiliated that our
great country, whose statesmen designed and set up the machinery of peace,
seems afraid to use it herself. The world must judge that we have things or
fear things in the future, that we are afraid to adjudicate of public opinion.
Nationalism is in the ascendant; preparedness races are eminent. America, at
least officially, begins to line up with the unidealistic and anti-Christian
forces. The next decade will be a “testing time”—a period of judgment. The
weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We need to teach and live, but it is
perfectly legitimate and entirely necessary that we make vocal in places where
it will count our determined opposition to increased armaments, to isolationist
policies—to Chauvinism in all its forms.
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