The First Lady of Radio (10 page)

Many a man who came back from the World War, even to this day, has no great desire to talk about his experience. And yet our youngsters of sixteen still think that there is glamour and beauty about war. They are accustomed to a competitive world, to a world in which strife is always going on about them. They do not even play games for the mere pleasure of playing; they must strive to win at all costs. So that they are even tempted, now and then, to cheat in order to obtain the victory. This may be a fitting preparation for the type of uncontrolled competition which they sometimes find when they enter upon the business of earning a living. But it hardly makes one considerate of the rights of others. Though in schools we give lip service to the Golden Rule and talk about it rather pompously as we grow older, I wonder how many of us really live it, or expect these youngsters to govern their lives in accordance with it. We have taught our children in their history to accept things which our country has done without too close scrutiny into the
ethics of their government. Until these things are changed we might as well realize that we have made no particular strides in changing the psychology which makes it possible to sweep a nation into war with little preparation and little thought.

Armistice Day should make us think primarily about the steps which we should take to teach our children what real patriotism is. It is obvious that we cannot disarm without the cooperation of the other nations of the world. But we can create good feeling. We can train young people to understand the people of other nations and to be fair and just in their dealings with these people. Perhaps we will have to set our own house in order first, and do away with some of the practices which our world of business has allowed to creep in. If we find this to be so, let us face the necessity and so do.

There is one sure way to change ethical standards, and that is by beginning with the young child and helping him as he grows older to have the strength to stand against certain temptations which have been too great for many of us in the past. We must be sure, in the first place, that we ourselves, as parents and as teachers, believe in the standards which we are teaching the children. And that we are not simply preaching to them an impractical idealism which we expect them to shed when they enter the practical world. We must, at least, strive to live up to the things which we teach them, as their safeguard in business, in politics, and in international relations. There are many young people today who find themselves confronted with a situation in all of these fields which they consider to show up their elders in a somewhat hypocritical light. They claim that had we lived up to the things which we are now teaching them, the world would have been a different place from what it is today and life for them might be far easier.

We must be sure that we teach not only by word of mouth but by example, and that we give our children the opportunity, during their school years, not only to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, but show
a real appreciation of the arts and sciences. And if possible, to develop any talent which they personally may have. For these creative activities may mean much in the greater leisure which we hope for in the future. A real knowledge and understanding of literature, not only because it is part of the curriculum, but for real enjoyment of books, will mean much to the future life of any child and to the culture of any country.

At the same time it is important that children grow up in an atmosphere of interest in public questions, and it is becoming increasingly evident that good government, particularly in a democracy, depends upon the interest and responsibility which every individual citizen is willing to shoulder. A child brought up in a home where they hear these questions discussed will take it for granted that he must, in time, take up his share of the responsibility and exercise his good citizenship through a knowledge of the issues at stake and of the people for whom he votes.

Teachers, mothers, and fathers are responsible for the developing of the characters of our citizens of tomorrow. If we are to have continued peace it will be through our own efforts. We do not want to bring up children who are afraid of war, horrible though war may be. We want to bring up children who have an understanding of the problems of the world, who have the ability to be fair and generous in their judgments and strong enough to stand by their beliefs and to work for peace in the same way that, in the past, we have worked to build up the material success of our nation and its defense when it was needed. Working toward peace is a slow process, it means changing human nature, changing the thought of nations, but we are the nation that can do it and the only way to begin is to begin!

ANNOUNCER: Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt. Now William Daly and his orchestra, playing “Vilja” from
The Merry Widow.

(ORCHESTRA)

(CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENT)

10.

“World Court Broadcast”

Sunday, January 27, 1935, 10:45–11:00 p.m. (NBC Red Network)

During the 1920s, Eleanor Roosevelt was a leading advocate for American participation in the League of Nations and its Permanent Court of International Justice, or World Court. She continued the campaign as first lady.

The League of Nations was proposed after the end of World War I in 1918. The war caused a staggering number of casualties: more than 9 million combatants died and more than 7 million remained missing. President Woodrow Wilson and other League proponents argued that by voluntarily working together, the member nations could create a framework of collective security that would prevent the kind of massive bloodshed caused by modern, mechanized warfare. The World Court enjoyed popular support in America, but congressional opponents blocked legislation ratifying US involvement. They warned that belonging to the association would drag the United States into future European entanglements. Isolationists claimed that America had been thrust into the war by bankers and arms merchants out to make a profit. America
should mind its own business, they said. Wilson's adversaries prevailed; in 1920 Congress voted against joining.

The League began operations in 1920 with forty-two member countries. The World Court opened two years later to hear disputes among nations. Pacifists such as Eleanor Roosevelt continued to crusade for the United States to join. When FDR was elected president in 1932, ER urged him to support the World Court legislation. Political pressure from isolationists made FDR reluctant to endorse the bill until 1935, when he finally backed the effort. The legislation had passed the House of Representatives but needed a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

On Sunday evening, January 28, 1935, leading figures for and against the World Court took to the national airwaves to rally the public. A Senate vote to join the Court was scheduled the next day. Fr. Charles Coughlin, the immensely popular radio priest from Michigan, urged listeners to contact their senators and voice their opposition to the international tribunal. “Today, whether you can afford it or not, send your senator a telegram telling him to vote ‘No,'” Coughlin declared. “The World Court has demonstrated that it has no power to keep peace in the world.”
¹

On NBC, Sen. Robert Rice Reynolds, a Democrat from North Carolina, gave a fifteen-minute speech against ratifying the World Court protocol. ER immediately followed with this fifteen-minute radio address in favor of the Court. The
New York Times
observed that it was the first time ER had “spoken so directly to the point of a matter of national interest being debated on Capitol Hill.”
²

The radio appeals, and a campaign against the bill by the Hearst newspaper chain, set loose a torrent of telegrams to Capitol Hill for and against the measure. Extra telegraph lines were set up and a double shift of operators worked through the night to handle the traffic. The Senate vote was delayed as supporters and opponents wrangled for leverage. Two days later, World Court ratification failed in the Senate by seven
votes. The United States never joined the League of Nations. It was replaced by the United Nations in 1945, for which ER was, again, one of the nation's leading crusaders.

ER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and friends. I am speaking to you tonight as a citizen and as a woman deeply interested in this question which you have heard discussed. I have listened with a great deal of interest to the speech which was largely against the League of Nations. We do not want to get into any other war. Nor did we want to get into the World War. Flying, which so many of us do today, does not seem to have made us grasp as yet how small the world is nor how dependent we are on conditions in other parts of the world. I am frequently told that you people who are listening to me tonight by your radios have no interest in the World Court. If that is so, I am deeply sorry, for I love my country and all its people, and I have a particular interest in the women and the young people. I feel when you have thought of this question in the light of today and of the future you will feel a deep interest in it too. We are constantly told that the father of our country, George Washington, recommended no foreign entangling alliances. He was a progressive for his day, and he knew what was good for our country in his day. But with all his objection to entangling alliances, he did not spurn an alliance with France, which helped us to gain our freedom.

Today we have become a great nation,
the
creditor nation of the world. Our tariffs have built competitive tariffs against us. It is becoming more difficult for us to trade with other nations. The lowered standards of living in other nations make it difficult for us to maintain our own standards of living. We are a part of the world, no matter how much we may wish that we could live unto ourselves alone. Now we come to the question of joining the World Court. According to two of our greatest jurists, the World Court is an independent body and not a part of the League of Nations. We originated the idea of a World Court.
The Hague Tribunal was established because of our suggestion. It is an arbitral court. It will arbitrate difficulties between nations. In an arbitration, both sides give up something and the result is a compromise. The World Court is different because it is a court of law, and one of our very greatest jurists has said that what the world needs today is a body of international law; without it, we will never be able to settle our disputes by law and not by war. That is what the World Court was set up to do, and that is what it has been doing. We join it under an optional clause which allows no question concerning our interests to be submitted to the Court without our consent. All the other great nations, except Japan, who have joined the Court, have now signed a compulsory clause which obliges them to submit any question that is desired or brought up to the court.

The Court has decided forty-eight cases, rendering twenty-three judgments and twenty-five advisory opinions. One of the great American objections to the Court has always been its advisory jurisdiction, and yet these advisory opinions are one of the great uses of the Court, for by rendering these opinions in an early stage before the question is actually brought up for a judgment, many difficulties can be removed. Fifty-five nations have signed the Court's statute, forty-nine have ratified their signatures.

The United States signed in 1929 and is the only large country that has not ratified. The only real question before us now is whether we want to throw the weight of the United States behind a cooperative effort among the nations to develop international law and apply it to the settlement of international disputes, or whether we despair of finding any substitute for war.

And now a word as to the Norris Amendment. We all know that the president has full power by his initiative to involve us in war, but this amendment denies him a like power to keep us out of war by submitting the dispute to the World Court. This amendment provides, in effect,
that one-third of the senators plus one may veto the submission of any dispute or question sent by the president to the Court for a peaceful disposition. The amendment was defeated, but it may have had an influence on your thought about the Court, and therefore I wish to speak of it tonight. It seems to me that we, the strongest nation in the world, cannot be afraid to take this step, to make this gesture in an effort to have questions settled by law and not by war. Is it really the spirit of our country's men and women, young and old, that they are afraid to join the World Court? I cannot believe it! The World War wasted billions of money and many, many human lives. After it, we had a short-lived prosperity and since then we have entered the depths of depression. We are finding our way out, but to say that any action which may help to prevent a recurrence of war is of no importance to the people of this country seems to me shortsighted. I remember the war well; I have looked on the acres of cemeteries in other countries where lie our boys and the boys of other nations. These dead are the result of war!

You may not care what happens in Europe or in Asia, but you feel here at home the result of anything which happens in other parts of the world. We cannot escape the reaction long. I have the greatest respect for the honored statesmen who are opposed to our entry into the World Court, though I differ with them for the reasons which I have given you. We cannot escape being a part of the world. Therefore, let us make this gesture for peace, and remember there was no World Court in 1914 when the Great War began. Since we have had a World Court, no nations have been forced into war by any decision of that Court, and some nations have been kept from what might have easily caused a war by these decisions.

I have not time to give you many instances, but just remember that Turkey and France might have come to war in the
Lotus
case, and the decision was rendered in favor of Turkey. And [Aristide] Briand, the great French statesman, though feeling ran high in France, said that he
would gladly resubmit the case rather than go to war. Lately, Norway and Denmark submitted a question of sovereignty in deciding the Coast of Greenland, and it was decided again in favor of the small country, Denmark.