Thousands of Political Prisoners Abroad Need Help, October 1925

Thousands of Political Prisoners Abroad Need Help

Will You Help Them?

More prisoners are held today for their political beliefs than ever before. The dictatorships of Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Spain have imprisoned thousands of radicals and advocates of democracy; England has locked up hundreds of nationalists in India and Egypt; Poland almost a thousand Communists and Ukrainian nationalists; Germany over 4,000 Communists; and Russia 1,500 to 2,000 Socialists, anarchists and others opposed to the Soviet dictatorship. The total number, impossible to get accurately, is estimated at over 30,000 for all countries, including the 78 in the U.S.

These prisoners and their families are being aided with money, food, clothes and reading matter very inadequately, and many not at all. The International Red Aid works wherever it can. So do the political parties and unions to which the prisoners belong. But more aid, with world-wide publicity on their distress, is imperative.

The International Committee for Political Prisoners

is organized to get the facts, raise relief in the United States and to tie together the scattered agencies here among the foreign-language groups in behalf of their comrades abroad.

Already five investigators from the U.S. have examined conditions in as many countries abroad, and three are there now. Contacts are being made with established relief agencies in each country. All the work is being done without salary. All relief money goes directly to the prisoners in the country for which it is designated. Overhead expenses for investigations, printing and office work are $2,000 this year.

A pamphlet of reprints of articles on conditions in all countries already covered has been issued; a book on Russian prisoners is in press; and pamphlets on Polish and Italian prisoners are to be issued shortly.

On the International Committee, among others, are Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, W. E. B. Du Bois, Lewis Gannett, Norman Hapgood, John Haynes Holmes, Robert Morss Lovett, Father John A. Ryan, James H. Maurer, Fremont Older, Eugene V. Debs, David Starr Jordan and Oswald Garrison Villard. The chairman is Roger N. Baldwin.

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