International Peace Campaign news letter. No. 9, Supplement : Resolutions and reports of the World Conference on the Bombardment of Open Towns and the Restoration of Peace

              Supplement to I.P.C. News Letter No. 9 (27/7/38)
Resolutions and Reports of the
WORLD CONFERENCE on the BOMBARDMENT of OPEN TOWNS and the RESTORATION of PEACE
Palais Mutualité, Paris, July 23rd and 24th, 1938
Organised by the International Peace Campaign
GENERAL RESOLUTION
The World Conference for Action on the Bombardment of Open Towns and the Restoration of Peace, grouping 1,000 delegates from 34 countries belonging to every section of society as well as to every shade of public opinion, philosophic and religious.
Implores the great States to safeguard peace while there is still time and thus to assure their own security.
It notes that world policy is more and more departing from the four principles on which the I.P.C. has been based — respect for treaties; universal limitation of armaments, collective security and machinery to allow of the peaceful solution of all international problems; and that this departure has resulted in wars of aggression, the barbarity of which increases daily and which it would be in vain to attempt to humanise.
The Conference is of opinion that the weakness and acquiescence of certain great States with regard to the aggressor States have made these States stronger, both in the eyes of international public opinion and of their own people; it feels that this criminal weakness has created the illusion that the real strength of the great democracies is unequal to that of the aggressor States.
It notes that in reality the democracies possess everything needed to stop wars of aggression, since the totalitarian States have at their disposal only a minute part of the financial and economic resources (in particular war materials, gold and petrol) necessary to the pursuit of their activities;  it therefore demands that steps be taken to forbid trade which is contrary to the interests of peace.
The Conference is of opinion that a more rational and equitable organisation of economic life would diminish the causes of conflict and of war; it feels that this problem should be linked with that of collective security; it believes that these two problems cannot be dealt with satisfactorily without the co-operation of the United States; and it instructs the Bureau of the I.P.C. to place both of them on the Agenda of a Conference to be held in the near future.
The Conference regrets that the shortcomings of the great States have dangerously weakened the authority of the League of Nations; it demands that the authority of the League be strengthened by a return to the law of the Covenant, the greatest expression of international morality.
The Conference sends its warmest congratulations to President Roosevelt and his Ministers for the courageous declarations they have recently made; it welcomes this attitude on the part of the American Government and American Democracy as a great hope for peace; it addresses an earnest appeal to President Roosevelt, to American Democracy and to all the democratic forces of the world; it hopes that their energetic preventive action will make impossible a world conflict which it would be easier to bring about than to stop; it calls on them to take the steps called for by the seriousness of the situation, promising them the unqualified support of the organisations adhering to the International Peace Campaign which group 400,000,000 human beings.