“GRADE SCHOOL”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1943, Page 4

“GRADE SCHOOL”

FOR WORLD AFFAIRS WORK OF AN AMERICAN LEAGUE UTILISING “GOOD COMMON SENSE” (By Mary Hornaday, in the “Christian Science Monitor.”) •j • . ... a If the Professor’s wife down the street suddenly brings up the subject of Russia when you meet at the huckster’s wagon sbiri'e morning, dbn’t be surprised. She’s probably just a member of the National League of Women Voters which is putting on a campaign to keep discussions of international dftairs on the average housewife’s level. After years of “high-brow” intellectual discussions, about “sanctions” and “collective security,” the League has come to the conclusion that we won’t have international peace until we utilise the “good common sense” of the average man and woman in achieving it. “If we believe the p'eopte are the source of the best government, then we must trust their ordinary common sense,” Miss Marguerite M. Wells explains. One big trouble 1 * with foreign affairs in the past, Miss Wells says, is that they’ve been made too complicated. Thinking he is not up to figuring out the right courses, the average citizen either relies on his prejudices or decides to let someone else tend to them. “The great matters are usually simple decisions,” says Miss Wells, “yet how complicated we make them. I’v'e seen people have ‘knock-dowh, drdg-'ddt’ arguments without ever getting back to the simple basic issue involved.” The League, Miss Wells says, has been spending too much time oh an intricate post-graduate course in public affairs, when what the public needs is a simple grade-school education. This summer, the League has been conducting a campaign to mobilise 50,000 members for an active campaign intended to convince millions of people throughout the United States in face-to-face conversations that international co-operation is essential to America’s existence. First training schools were held in Indianapolis, Washington, and St. Louis and from these workers went out to teach others in 600 local Leagues all over the country.

At these schools the women learn the strategy of talk—talk that will offset “a vociferous minority that might •convince bur leaders that we want to go back to ‘normalcy’ or ‘isolationism.’ ” It’s a new experience for'a lot of the women. I don’t mean talking, but talking with everyone and everybody. One woman rbported to headquarters how she observed the man next to her on the train reading a newspaper. There are all sorts of ways to “pick up” a stranger on a train, blit her approach was unique. “Is there anything in that paper about reciprocal trade agreements?” she asked.

Probably never having heard of reciprocal trade agreements, the man said he didn’t think so. Some time later he came back from the diner with another paper.- He handed it to her. “Here,” he said, “is something about trade agreements.” “I consider that I'oo per cent,” said Miss Wells.

League members use all kinds of ruses to open conversations on international affairs. Letters from soldiers overseas is a natural. A housewife starts telling about the letter that came from her son in the Pacific in 10 days. That gives the League member an opening to say how small the world has grown and how we must liearn to get along with our neighbours after the war.

Always she tries to bring the conversation down to simple basic issti'es. If a friend expresses a distaste for (Great Britain or Russia, she retorts that if there is to be any international organisation it cannot succeed without the co-operation of the three nations which control the military power— Russia, Great Britain, and the United States, and of China whose, ppwer is potentially great. The alternative is all-out armament or a balance-of-pow-er arrangement outside an international organisation.

Main aim of the League is to get more people talking and thinking about foreign affairs. The end of the war, or at least the European phase of it, may come sooner than we eipect. After that, what? The best answer, Miss Wells is confident, will not be reached by intellectuals but by the simple folk whose judgments and intuitions are more often right than wrong.