A Determined Group in Pursuit of World Peace : International League of Women and Men Maintains Vital Links

“Listen to women for a change. “

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has been recommending that for the last 70 years, ever since its formation in 1915. Now members also put it on banners and wear it on buttons. The world may not always have been listening, but it is not for lack of effort on the league’s part. Its 50,000 members, among them some men, in 27 countries do not give up.

They are prestigious enough that two of their members, Jane Addams, its first international president, and Emily Greene Balch, its first international secretary, received Nobel Peace Prizes in 1931 and 1946, respectively.

But They Are Humble

And they are humble enough that there was nothing unusual about its current Los Angeles president, Blanche Spindel, patiently standing with two other members for several hours on the corner of Edgemont and Sunset, as she did last month, collecting signatures to petition the two superpowers at the Geneva summit meeting for a comprehensive test ban treaty. If that is what needs doing, that is what league members will do.

“It was a nice experience,” Spindel said afterward, saying they had been working in coalition with other peace groups, (which resulted nationwide in more than 1 million signatures). “It was a good response. Not everyone would stop or sign, but nobody was vicious. We got about 100 signatures that afternoon.”

And while it may sound impressive to have headquarters in Geneva, in Los Angeles that same organization is plagued by the lack of an office or staff. Spindel would like to expand the membership, but, she said, “it makes it hard to reach people.” The L.A. section has a mailing list of 550.

Since a world at peace is not simply a world not at war, the league is not a one-issue organization.

Seek to Educate

“We make the connections,” Edith Ballantyne, secretary-general of the league since 1969, said here recently during a visit from Geneva. They work for disarmament; for political and nonviolent solutions to international conflict; for economic justice within and among nations; for the elimination of racism, discrimination and exploitation; for the respect of human rights; for the advancement of women.

They are fond of saying that they do their homework; that they study and then seek to educate. They do so at both international and grass-roots levels:

They meet with world leaders. They consult with organizations of the United Nations, especially the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. They informally advise U.N. delegates and staff in Geneva and New York. They send investigative missions to troubled areas--to the Middle East, to Vietnam, to Northern Ireland, to Central America. They hold seminars and conferences--on chemical and biological warfare, on disarmament, on the United States budget. They study--the debt crisis, the status of workers regarding new technologies, unions, health hazards, working conditions. They work in coalition with other organizations, turning out for vigils, demonstrations, protests, rallies, sit-ins, including, occasionally, those that involve civil disobedience.

They are on the go, and they seem to be tireless.

And ageless. Recently the Los Angeles section gathered for an “early-supper” meeting at the May Co.’s tea room on Wilshire to hear Ballantyne. One 94-year-old active member, taking note of the predominantly retirement-age crowd, commented, “If you want to stay young, join the league.”

Over the years, they have been called, by their own telling, stooges, naive do-gooders, leftists, radicals, fronts for the Soviets, a Communist front organization.

“I think we’re respected by those we work with. But when the international situation becomes tense, with East and West pulling at each other, we suffer from that,” Ballantyne said in an interview. (Born in Czechoslovakia, she is a Canadian citizen.) “We’ve never been accused of raising issues we can’t substantiate. I say, ‘Tell me specifically what you’re referring to (with such charges) and we’ll discuss it.’ ”

Cooperation Is Goal

It is true the league has had extensive contacts with the Soviet Union. And, since they are frequently explaining the Soviets to hostile or suspicious listeners, they sometimes sound defensive.

“Our aim is always to promote cooperation, so we have to cooperate with anyone willing,” Ballantyne said. “Our emphasis is on preventing another nuclear war. That’s our priority. We want a better understanding and working together between the two powers. We simply have to accept the Soviet Union as it is.”

Included in that acceptance is the absence of a WILPF section in the Soviet Union or Soviet bloc countries.

“In socialist countries, they will always tell you they just don’t organize in that way. They have professional organizations, men’s and women’s organizations. They have a peace committee, a women’s committee.”

One member from Panorama City, Lois Hamer, who serves on the national board, put it another way. She knows the league is sometimes accused of being uncritical, and countered that. “We can’t have sections in any country where people are not free to criticize their government.”

Generally, however, most people involved in the league share Ballantyne’s conviction that they cannot wait for change before they communicate. Carol Pendell of Balboa, WILPF’s international president, said “I think the league understands that until we start working with people of other persuasions, we aren’t going to get anywhere. The time where we can stand apart has long gone.”

Pendell, mother of three grown sons, grandmother and wife of a United Methodist minister, recently retired, has been with the league since the ‘60s, she said. Since 1961 the U.S. section of the league has been involved in seminars with the Soviet Women’s Committee. They are held every other year, back and forth between the two countries. Next June the women will meet in Colorado, she said.

Pendell has been closely involved in these seminars, and was responsible for the American section’s participation from 1972-1980.

Pendell believes she has a role to play in bringing the league’s message to “center and right of center organizations. They need it most and I can best speak to them.” She is very aware of her image as a minister’s wife living in a parsonage.

It is all consistent to her. Active in the peace movement since college, she said, she joined the league in 1965 because of the quality of its leaders that she had met. And she agreed with “its basic tenet of bringing about social change by nonviolent means.”

“It’s not a religious organization, but its early leaders had that perspective of religious commitment. I feel if your personal religious commitment is to have any meaning at all, you have to be involved in the world around you.”

The world around them was a world at war when the League was founded in 1915 in the Netherlands. What had been planned for 1914 as an international suffrage organization, was postponed because of the war and re-planned as a women’s peace congress when more than 1,000 women from 12 belligerent and neutral countries met in The Hague. They did not meet again until 1919 in Zurich after the war had ended, but in the intervening years the continuing committee laid the foundation for WILPF.

In addition to the stated goals mentioned above, which are still their priorities, was a call for a “Society of Nations.” WILPF supported the League of Nations, and has always been a strong supporter and remained closely attached to the United Nations.

The kinds of activities that a proliferation of peace groups, or disarmament groups, are engaged in now have been standard fare for WILPF since the start.

They were watchdogs, gadflys, activists. They warned of rising anti-Semitism in Europe and growing German totalitarianism in 1924. Their delegations went to observe conditions in Indochina, China, Nicaragua and Haiti, and the league claims today that its 1926 report on Haiti led to the withdrawal of U.S. Marines. (The Marines had been there since 1915, in a pre-emptive move to thwart Germany from gaining a Caribbean foothold during World War I.)

In the ‘30s the U.S. section spearheaded a successful effort to hold Senate hearings on the arms industry and arms trade. And it warned the United States not to supply war materials to Japan.

The U.S. section opposed the country’s participation in World War II, and lost many members. Other stands in the ‘50s and ‘60s did not lose them members, but did, they say, make life difficult. They opposed the Korean War, loyalty oaths, refused to ban communists from their membership. And they protested nuclear bomb testing in 1957, started communicating with Soviet women in 1961 and actively participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.

Oddly enough, this organization that was founded by suffragists went along parallel lines with the modern women’s movement in recent years. Feminism had not been a major focus. And, for many feminists, the peace movement seemed in practice a highly politicized way of sidetracking or derailing women’s rights. The two continued along separate courses. But within the course of the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985, the goals of peace and an improved status for women were increasingly seen to be linked.

At Nairobi, the League saw history catch up with them. For the overwhelming majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 women peace and the status of women were inextricably linked.

Before Nairobi, Ballantyne said, the league had wanted a peace center at the forum sponsored by non-governmental organizations. There was some resistance, she said, from people who “were afraid the whole theme of peace would introduce political issues. They did not want it to interfere with women’s issues in a narrow context.

“Our position was that peace is a women’s issue. It is not something just to be discussed in men’s forums. Many women who had been active in the decade and were peace activists felt the decade had not focused enough on the role of feminists in peace--peace in the wide context of human rights, and conflicts.”

They set up a Peace Tent on the University of Nairobi conference where the forum was held. Jointly sponsored by the league and Feminists International for Peace and Food, a small but well-financed group that picked up most of the costs, the tent was one of the most popular and famous features of the forum. It was the scene of many painful, heated exchanges among women from conflicted areas of the world.

“I came away (from Nairobi) feeling very--what the feminists say--empowered,” Ballantyne said. “I really felt if this world is going to be saved, it’ll be saved by women. With men, of course, but with our numbers at 52% of the population, we have to be there.”

It is not saved yet. And the league would say, not even close.

Having been dedicated to the achievement of peace and freedom for the last 70 years seems to have put WILPF on the losing side of history. Or does it?

“It’s very hard to evaluate what we’ve achieved,” Ballantyne said. “You have to ask where would we be without organizations like us. There have been some achievements and the league can take some credit. They are the result of the efforts of many. For example, not a government in the world would dare say it is not for disarmament. They all say they want to promote peace and dedicate themselves to finding a solution to economic problems.”

She would be the first to say, however, that a lot remains to be done. Avoiding an economic collapse and preventing a war head the list.

Since the league does make the connections, the connection it is concentrating on right now is the world economy. For example, the U.S. section has published “The Women’s Budget,” a detailed analysis and proposal that redistributes the 1985 budget, including a $146 billion (or 50%) military spending reduction with a concomitant increase in social programs that benefit women and children. At WILPF’S next triannual congress in 1986, the focus will be on economic issues, she said.

“We want to understand the whole debt crisis better and what it means to the world tension. We have to prevent a collapse. Up until now, every time there has been an economic collapse, it has resulted in a world war. We cannot afford that.”

It is an agenda that does not allow for a leisurely pace, Ballantyne acknowledged. There is an urgency and immediacy to what they are doing, she said, that has become absolutely essential.

“I was at a birthday meeting in Fresno, and someone wished us another 70 years. ‘No,’ I answered back. I don’t think we’ll survive if it takes 70 years. It’s going to have to happen in the next five to 10 years.”