Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, speaking at a luncheon meeting of World Peaceways held at the Empire State Club yesterday, said that President Roosevelt’s peace speech delivered last April contributed to a belief in the genuineness of Hitler’s peace declarations.
Speaking before a gathering of notables who came to honor the authors of “Nazism, An Assault on Civilization” and to launch a program for wide circulation of the book, Dr. Wise said:
“Whoever helped the President in the framing of his appeal to the nation in April, 1933, for world peace can hardly have come to feel any distress over the advantage which accrued to Hitler out of the acceptance of the Hitler peace program by the people, as if it were a true and genuine statement of Hitler’s peace principles and program.”
At the outset of his address Dr. Wise held up to scorn what he termed the “implacable optimism” on the part of American Jews with regard to Hitlerism in Germany, and especially in the United States. He said that his chief objective is to “make headway among the Jewish people, who suffer from a sense of inferiority and must be made to believe what really obtains in this country in connection with vicious Nazi propaganda.”
Dr. Wise said with emphasis that churches and Christian institutions in the United States “should raise their voices against Hitlerism, or paganism.” He asserted that Hitlerism is leading directly to war and referred to war and Hitlerism as “equal and identical quantities.”
Following the address of Mrs. Theresa Mayer Durlach, president and founder of World Peaceways, who had echoed the view that only by warring against all war can Hitlerism be struck a fatal blow, Dr. Wise took issue with her saying that the fight should be concentrated on Hitler. The fight for peace is secondary and incidental to the fight on Hitlerism, he insisted.
Other speakers at the luncheon including Professor John Dewey, who presided; Mrs. Estelle M. Sternberger, secretary of World Peaceways, and Miriam Beard Vagts, daughter of Professor Charles A. Beard, voiced the concerted opinion that “the fight against Hitlerism is only beginning.”
Mrs. Sternberger said that “the reason we are here is found in a comparison of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ with the books of Dr. Dewey.”
Dr. Dewey in an introductory address said that “Hitler has succeeded in buying off Poland, and France has not yet been bought off because she does not regard with much respect the promises of Hitler made on paper.”
Dr. Dewey spoke of the international munitions workers, who he declared, are the mainspring of war causes. He said he regrets the success of “German financiers who wield great power in Germany and who are encouraging war programs guised as peace programs.”
The speaker quoted an authority as having established beyond a doubt the existence of a pact of peace between Germany and Japan, and spoke with derision of the role of Hitler in condemning Communism. He assailed the Reich Chancellor for his “unscrupulous and ruthless methods.”
FASCISM VS. CAPITALISM
Mrs. Durlach’s words were couched in no uncertain language. She said that Fascism is “really an enemy of capitalism, and the best way to fight Fascism is by organizing the capitalists.” She decried the fact that the Nazis have set up “the battlefield as a nursery,” and pleaded that war in general and Fascism in particular be made the object of “economic war.”
The World Peaceways’ president launched a verbal attack at the United States Army which she said “burdens every man, woman and child in the United States with a twenty-five dollar tax.” She said that whatever practices have sway in the Third Reich “are to be found in the records of our last war, in the discipline and routine and equipment and manual of the American army.”
With much emphasis she scored the “vast expenditures” made for munitions in this and other countries.”
“I advocate teaching the people their power,” declared Mrs. Durlach. “Teach them their buying power, and then teach them to crush the profit making munition factories.”
Miss Beard enumerated the leaders of the Nazi administration in Germany and labeled them as “a bunch of hardened political criminals.”
Among those present were Emil. Lengyel, newspaper correspondent; Albert Brandt, writer on foreign affairs; I. A. Hirschmann, founder of the Bamberger Musical Scholarships; James Waterman Wise, editor of Opinion and editor of the anthology on Nazism, copies of which were distributed among the guests.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
