PEACE SOCIETIES DENY "RED" TIES
Resent Lt. Hurley's Charges of Soviet Alliance
Statements made in a talk before the Common Cause Forum at Franklin Union last Sunday evening by Lt. Joseph J. Hurley have aroused officers of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Fellowship of Youth for Peace, who demand that Lt. Hurley either retract his statements or offer proof.
An open letter to the Herald signed by representatives of the three societies, says, in part: "According to the newspaper report of the Common Cause Forum at Franklin Union last Sunday evening, you made certain statements about the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Fellowship of Youth for Peace which we, as officers of the organizations in question, know to be false and which we ask you, as a gentleman, to retract. If you have what you consider adequate basis for the statements, we ask that you produce proof."
CALL FOR RETRACTION
"We ask you more specifically to retract the following statements:
"That the three organizations [above] mentioned are 'antagonistic to established government and secretly [allied] with the soviet cause.'
"That the fellowship of youth 'is the most insidious in its propaganda [and] dangerous to the civilization we now enjoy, and that its members want only peace which sovietism would bring [in] the world, and that it is a fellowship movement which is pregnant with [evil] portent, and that its ideals have [degenerated] into a movement which was designed to mold the minds of children to communistic principles.'
"That the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 'is [a] menace to the United States' and that it adopted the so-called slacker oath in 1924; also that it has gone on record on many occasions, as in favor of the soviet government.
"That the above organizations stand for bowing the knee to Soviet Russia and that they are behind guileless citizens 'to do vile work, spewed forth from the mouth of the beast that was Russia,' that 'they stalk through the land preaching sovietism, socialism, and slackerism.'"
The letter is signed by Martha [Helen] Elliott, for the W.I.L.P.F.; Ethel P. Moore, for the F.O.R.; and Thomas Q. Harrison, for the F.Y.P.
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