Ford Hall Forum Speech, April 12, 1921 (excerpt)

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MISS ADDAMS URGES ARMAMENT REDUCTION

"Disarmament is not a new and untried thing, it is working successfully on the frontier between the United States and Canada, on the frontier between Norway and Sweden. Why not extend the number of disarmed frontiers as much as possible and reduce armaments as much as possible on the other borderlines."

Such was the keynote of a speech delivered at Ford Hall last night at a disarmament mass meeting, arranged by the League for Democratic Control, by Miss Jane Addams of Chicago.

"When one thinks that we have in this country a glut of wheat, more wheat than we can use, and 1,000,000 pounds of wool in storage, and that the poor wretches over in Europe have no food for their families, no blankets to keep them warm, because there is not enough of raw material there to give them employment, is it any wonder that they think us more selfish than we are?"

She scoffed at the idea that America should feel itself insecure and in need of tremendous armaments to protect herself. "There's every reason why France should feel insecure," she said, "there is every reason why she should have bitterness and regrets. But there is no reason why the United States should get frightened."

Prof Manley O. Hudson of the Harvard Law School, formerly a member of the League of Nations Secretariat at Geneva, rapped President Harding's message, because it did not, he said, speak definitely enough in favor of armament reduction.

Mrs Glendower Evans also spoke. L. S. Skinner presided.

A resolution asking Congress to reduce armament programs and to call a naval disarmament conference with England and Japan, was adopted [unanimously]. The sum of $270, collected there, was split in two, half to go toward the expenses of the meeting, half to the starving children of Vienna.