286 J.-A. PEMBERTON
of the American League of Nations Association, of which Shotwell was
the chair, the American Association of University Women, the Church
Peace Union, the American Union for Concerted Peace Efforts and
the World Citizens Association.^155 In December 1939, the commission
announced that its aim was to ‘assist the American people in thinking
through “the fundamental bases of lasting peace”’ and that it would
assist the American people in this regard by undertaking expert studies
on the means necessary for the organisation of peace. Explaining in brief
its method of approach, the commission declared that it would
first study the fundamental principles of the problem before us, including
such subjects as the economic interdependence of peoples, the changing
nature of war and its effects in our world, and the experience and experiments
since the World War of 1914-18. Coming to the heart of the problem, the
Commission will consider the world we want, a world of justice and peace,
and the means of arriving at these ends. The problem will be viewed from
political, economic and social angles. Lastly, of course, there must be faced
the problem of the rôle of the United States in dealing with these profoundly
vital questions. It is not enough, however, for a group of experts in this or any
other country to reach agreement as to the bases of a lasting peace. People
everywhere must be studying the same problems and reaching their own con-
clusions. Popular education in this field is an essential part of the effort.^156In order to encourage the public’s thinking through of the bases of
peace, the commission launched on January 27, 1940, a series of weekly
national broadcasts on the Columbia Broadcasting System. These
broadcasts, which were put out by certain members of the commis-
sion, addressed the following topics: the changing nature of war; the
(^155) For the membership of the Commission to Study the Organisation of Peace see
Charles DeBenedetti, ‘James T. Shotwell and the Science of International Politics,’
Political Science Quarterly 89, no. 2 (1974): 379–95, 392, and Smith Simpson, ‘The
Commission to Study the Organization of Peace,’ American Political Science Review 35,
no. 2 (1941): 317–24, 318–19. The Church Peace Union was founded by Dale Carnegie
in 1914. The American Union for Concerted Peace Efforts was formed in New York on
March 30, 1939. It had three aims: ‘to oppose aggression, to promote economic justice
between nations and to develop adequate peace machinery.’ Shotwell was one of its hon-
orary vice-presidents. The World Citizens Association was founded in Chicago 1939. See
Simpson, ‘The Commission to Study the Organization of Peace,’ 318n–19n.
(^156) Pamphlet issued by the Commission to Study the Organisation of Peace, 1939,
quoted in Simpson, ‘The Commission to Study the Organization of Peace,’ 318.