Board Meeting to Open Tuesday in Washington
Mrs. Thomas G. Winter to [Catechize] Members at Session in Capital.
Interpretation of World Court Stand Defined at Atlanta to Be Studied
LEADERS of the 2,000,000 club women of America from every state in the Union will be called upon to decide what attitude the federation will take on the whole question of National Defense at the mid-year board meeting to be held in Washington, D.C., from Tuesday to Thursday, inclusive, by Mrs. Thomas G. Winter, president of the federation.
Questions to be put squarely to the women will be:
"Do you advocate or oppose an adequate support of the American army and navy in this tumultuous world?
"Do you or do you not stand for American defense methods, keeping abreast of the world in invention and production, calculated to protect our dignity and safety in case of attack?"
Another question to be submitted to the board by Mrs. Winter as chairman of the international relations department of the federation, will be the interpretation of the resolution passed by the council at Atlanta on the World Court. The resolution [endorsed] "all practical measures and movements for the hearing and adjudication by orderly judicial procedure of international controversies which are susceptible of [page 2] settlement through judicial tribunals."
"I mean to ask the women," Mrs. Winter said on the eve of her departure last night for Washington, "whether they menace the World Court or if it is just words."
Mrs. Winter explained that unless the policy of the federation on the two main questions was definitely determined, the work of the international relations department could mean nothing more than glittering generalities.
"I wish it were possible," Mrs. Winter said, "to put into the discussion of all the questions on international relations the tremendous urge I feel on behalf of the federation. No single compact mass of womanhood has ever matched its strength in the history of the world. It has the crucial part to play in the most crucial of all ages. I mean to ask the women if they will evade it by being timorous or indifferent or take the leadership, rightfully theirs and set America's feet firmly in the front of the human family, ready to take the steps one after another, plodding yet invincible, and never wavering from the path of world vision and world leadership."
Mrs. Winter declared that the organization of the international relations department of the federation had grown by the appointment of chairmen of international relations in 39 states working constantly with the central federation committee.
Bulletins are being prepared by members of the general federation committee, she said, on pan-America and Mexico and American relations with them; correspondence is being carried on constantly through Mrs. Robert Burdette of California with women in foreign lands; and another pamphlet is in the process of compilation based on a questionnaire sent to the states asking for all resolutions concerning world peace or international relations.
Two pamphlets have already been sent out all over the United States, one setting forth the attitude of the general federation on the question of international relations, the practical work that might be accomplished and a brief study course on international relations with bibliography. The other a bulletin which concerned itself with the World Court, international institutes sponsored by the club women and the plan for an International League of Friendship as suggested by Mrs. Charles Sumner Boyd, one of the four women to serve on the advisory committee of the Arms conference.
Referring to the Bok Peace Award, Mrs. Winter declared that the international relations department "was anxious to give any possible strength of the federation to this really unpartisan and unbiased attempt to get, first a really workable idea and then an all-American expression of its availability."
In addition to the questions pertaining to international relations, new business to come before the board meeting, Mrs. Winter said, would be the responsibility to be assumed by the general federation at the meeting of the International Council of Women to be held in America in 1925. Mrs. John D. Sherman represented the federation at the meet held recently in Decatur, Ill., where representatives of the National Council of Women of which Mrs. Philip North Moore of St. Louis is president, made tentative plans for the [world] gathering.
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