by Mitch Hall

Back in 1970,  I worked in Europe on a peace and ecology movement project called Dai Dong, sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an ecumenical peace organization founded in England and Germany in 1914 at the beginning of WWI. The FOR, throughout its long history, has been dedicated to promoting nonviolent social transformation and ending war. It is inspired by the world's spiritual traditions. My job in 1970 was to help build a movement that would join together ecological awareness with the need for disarmament, demilitarization, and dedicating the resources of the nations of the earth toward saving the planet and its peoples from ecological catastrophe rather than wasting these precious resources on waging wars that bring only misery in their wake while enriching the coffers of the predatory profiteers of violence. In the course of my FOR work, I was one of the principal organizers of an ecology conference in Menton, France, along the Mediterranean coast.

The distinguished scientists invited to the conference came from several countries, and I had personally invited some of them to participate. As the French-speaking member of the Dai Dong team, I went in advance to Menton and set up hotel accommodations and a conference venue, etc. The scientists who came to the conference were tasked with creating an evidence-based document that would speak to the urgency of the looming ecological crisis and the needed changes in national priorities worldwide.

A team of us circulated the Menton Message to scientists around the world and gathered signatures from 2, 200 of them. I had the declaration translated into French, circulated it among French-speaking scientists in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, elicited their signatures, and submitted the materials to FOR headquarters for inclusion in a presentation in a well-publicized ceremony to U Thant, then Secretary General of the United Nations. I was a participating observer in the conference in Menton where this historic document was created. I also met with and obtained signatures from such French scientists as Nobel-laureate Jacques Monod, the famed biologist Jean Rostand (son of the author of Cyrano de Bergerac), and the renowned agronomist René Dumont.

Two of my long-time friends, Earl Katz and John Maybury, also worked on this project. I had known Earl since we were both 14 years old, and he courageously quit a job in the corporate world to join me in this venture by becoming the FOR fundraiser and national program director for the Dai Dong project. John and I met through this work, and we've been friends ever since.

In case you'd like to read the ever-more-urgently relevant Menton Message, you can find links below in your language of choice, whether English, French, or Spanish. The Menton Message, as you will see, was published in The UNESCO Courier, and it was also a working document for the first United Nations Conference on the Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972.

It was a privilege for me to work on this project and to have added my modest efforts to the momentum of growing awareness and efforts toward changes needed to avert ecological catastrophe of an unprecedented scale for our species and all others on this increasingly fragile ecosphere. Thanks to Earl for finding that this edition of the UNESCO Courier is archived on line, to him and John for continuing to be voices for ecological sanity through Earl's films and John's writings. Thanks to all those individuals, communities, and organizations that have awakened to the earth’s needs and are making good changes in their own lifestyles and trying, against the odds, to redirect the course of national and corporate policies in more life-serving pathways.

A Message to our 3.5 billion neighbours on planet earth
Message à 3 milliards et demi de terriens
Mensaje a 3.500 millones de habitantes de la tierra
The UNESCO Courier: a window open on the world; XXIV, 7
Publ: 1971; p. 1-33, illus.*.


Written in Oakland, CA, February, 2013