"War Is Hell," Says Francis Lederer in Speaking of World Disrupted by Greed

Francis Lederer, romantic matinee idol of women from Radcliffe to Paris, Manhattan to Vienna, has not always been such. Once a floor-washer in Prague for $1.20 a week, he, today, has a tremendous interest in promoting world peace and preventing wars. To advance the idea, he has founded, and is supporting, a World Peace Federation.

He is voluminous on the subject, and can talk profoundly on its thousand-and-one ramifications. The purpose of his organization is to induce people to sign cards, saying, "I am in accord with the aim of the Federation to out-law war by popular vote." To date, they have obtained 600,000 signatures in every country in the world. In countries like our own, they have less difficulty, because of the popular feeling for peace. In countries like Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia, however, they meet with more determined opposition, accounted for by their collective warlike attitude.

Mr. Lederer became imbued with the peace idea, when as a youth of sixteen in Czechoslovakia, he saw the horrors of the late World War. He immediately tried to reason the whole problem out, and arrived at the conclusion that the people don't want war, that in times of crises they are easily led, merely tools in the hands of politicians and munitions makers. Today, the nations of the world are spending 81 per cent of their incomes for armament, and according to him, the people deriving benefits are not the nations themselves, but greedy individuals growing sleek on the sweat from other brows.

To rectify this situation, he is attempting an educational program, coupled with the pledge-signing. In his work, he is not going about it by making rash promises, or by speaking about things so far in the future that talk is mere conjecture. Instead he is plodding along, trying to make this world a better place in which to live