Peace Strikes, Forums Mark Pacifist History
1965 is not the first year in KU's history that militant pacifists have dominated the news scene.
Thirty years ago today-Oct. 29, 1934—the University of Kansas Peace Action committee held their initial meeting in the Kansas Union. This group established weekly meetings and forums and played a minor role in the congressional elections that year.
NATIONALLY known speakers were brought to the campus for regional conferences of peace action groups: Dr. Jesse McKnight, travelling secretary of the League of Nations associations; Faye Bennett, national committee member of the Young Socialist League; and Hazel Whitman, representing the National Youth Committee Against War.
After minor reorganization in 1935, the committee conducted a series of well-attended campus forums: "Is War Inevitable?" "What Causes War?," "What is Patriotism?," "The Individual and War," "War and Propaganda," and "Should I Support the Strike?"
PROMINENT KU faculty members participated in the forums—Olin Templin, John Ise, Walter Sandelius, Chancellor Ernest Lindley, Carroll D. Clark—and a German exchange scholar defended his native country's foreign policy at one forum.
Still, committee activities did not raise conservative Kansas hacks until the Peace Strike of April 12, 1935. About 700 students, one-fifth of KU's student body, gathered in Fowler Grove (the lawn in front of the Journalism School) to protest war.
THE 35-MINUTE strike was part of a national protest the same day, involving 150,000 college students.
THE PEACE STRIKE scheduled for April 22,1937,met with a different fate than its forerunners in 1935-1936. Twenty organizations were scheduled to participate in the walkout.Plans were to make that strike more formal than the other two: Hoch auditorium would be commandered for a convocation.
Chancellor E. H. Lindley clamped down on the use of Hoch for a "strike," in deference to the state political climate.
After much administrative-student discussion, a compromise
was reached. There would be a "Peace Mobilization Convocation," but not a "strike." Thus, KU was still able to participate in that year's national student strike involving 2,000,000 other students, upon the twentieth anniversary of the World War I conscription.
Strong pacifist activity did not resume until 1945, when campus houses and organizations nurtured grandiose plans for a miniature peace conference, somewhat akin to the current KU-Y Model United Nations.
In September, plans for the peace conference materialized further, but student disinterest and apathy finally killed the conference.
Its death came in Oct., 1945. The Daily Kansan covered it this way:
"THE PEACE conference died
Daily Kansan
The pacifist history at KU is a long one. Successors to the organizations of the 1930's and 1940's still thrive today—Student Peace Union. Students for a Democratic Society, and numerous liberal and religious organizations.
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