Enroute to Washington Parley, Mrs. Brin Pauses to Talk of Peace

Mrs. Arthur Brin of Minneapolis, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, spent Friday in New York. Coming from a tour of the Canadian sections of the Council, Mrs. Brin paused here long enough to deliver a talk on peace over a national radio network prior to proceeding to Washington to participate prominently in the six-day sessions of the Conference on the Cause and Cure of War which opened yesterday.

She also attended a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Council, to plan for the fourteenth triennial convention which will be held at New Orleans in March.

She is outspoken in her espousal of peace. She quite definitely believes in birth control as a social remedy and believes in Judaism as a unifying force for Jewish women. In fact she believes that to be the prime function of the National Council, the purpose for which it was founded forty-two years ago, she declared in an interview.

On peace, Mrs. Brin says: “It is consistent that the Jewish women, who are taught by their prophets and sages to believe in a warless world, should make peace one of the major interests in their program.”

Setting fifteen years as the age of the international peace movement, Mrs. Brin is quite optimistic. “There is,” she said, “greater interest in peace than ever before. And this notwithstanding the seemingly discouraging political situation.

IN FAVOR OF LEAGUE ENTRANCE

“When women first became interested in the peace movement,” she continued, “they thought it would be easier. They thought the will to peace was enough. Since, they have learned that the technique of peace must be learned in study groups.

“Now, we have reached the point where we must draw in a larger group of women and expose to them the failure of war as a means of settling international disputes. We must teach women to think ### terms of the ‘peace technique.’ “

Mrs. Brin revealed that the Council is in favor of United States entrance in both the World Court and the League of Nations. She points out that the very fact that scoffers, in times of international stress, point out the shortcomings of the League of Nations is indicative of the fact that they think now not in terms of war machinery but in terms of peace machinery.

On birth control, Mrs. Brin indicated that she, personally, and the Council favor legislative action. The Council, she revealed works with the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee for suitable legislation in this respect.

And tying up war and birth control, she inquires:

“Did it ever occur to you that Hitler and Mussolini — the two most military minded men in Europe—are in favor of large families in any and all situations?”

Of the Council, which she heads, Mrs. Brin said: “It is the only organization furnishing a program on which all Jewish women can get together. The Council should and does stand for Jewish women in America. It stands for the Jewish women in the integration of Jewish life into the American scene. It strives to lift the level of American-Jewish life.”

40,000 MEMBERS

Mrs. Brin stated that she intends to ask the Council Convention to intensify the work being done with a Jewish import. With a national membership of 40,000, composed of women of all groups in Judaism, Mrs. Brin believes that the Council is one of the few Jewish organizations so constituted as to “view the Jewish problem as a whole, in its totality.”

Mrs. Brin has been an active club worker for twenty-five years, since her undergraduate days at the University of Minnesota. Looking back, she thinks that “great things have been accomplished in that time.” The two things that particularly intrigued her were women’s suffrage and peace.

“Both ideas,” she said, “appealed to me. They came quite naturally: I felt them deeply. We women who were behind the suffrage movement turned to the question of peace after we were given the right to vote in 1919.”