dicated that any statements had been made without his sanction, and expressed the opinion that nothing that transpired either yesterday or the day before should have been divulged.
Asked whether any one else will be called to testify regarding the purported Fascist plot, McCormack admitted the committee will try to get Robert Sterling Clark, millionaire broker and part-heir to the Singer Sewing Machine for#une, to appear before it.
CLARK DISAVOWS CHARGE
Clark, now in Paris, had been {SPAN}#amed{/SPAN} by Butler as one of the {SPAN}#ponsors{/SPAN} of the proposal which MacGuire allegedly made to the General.
According to cabled reports from Paris yesterday, the wealthy sportsman declared he is “just as opposed to Fascism as I am to Communism.”
Referring to Gen. Butler, Clark admitted he had “urged him strongly to use his influence in favor of sound money and against inflation,” but denied any part in a supposed plot.
PUBLIC HEARING NEXT MONTH
Contrary to previous reports, McCormack said yesterday, the committee has not decided to alter its original plans as a result of Butler’s revelations. No public hearing is contemplated before the middle of next month, he declared. He set December 17 as a tentative date for the open sessions, which will take place in Washington.
The committee was encouraged by reports from Washington yesterday that Secretary of War George H. Dern and Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson were interested in testimony given here by Butler.
“I am confident the committee will get all the facts and arrive at an impartial judgment,” Swanson was quoted as saying.
“I believe the committee should make a complete investigation of these charges,” Dern told reporters. “It should dig into all the facts and find out what there is to the affair.”
MANY OFFERS MADE
While efforts were being made in many quarters to discredit his story, Butler further revealed yesterday that no less than forty-two Fascist offers had been made to him.
“While many of the movements unquestionably are crack-pot in their origin,” he told a reporter, “there is no discounting the fact that some of them are supported by wealthy contributors.”
He declared he had willingly seized the opportunity to go before the Congressional committee because his name had been “bandied about as the leader of a Fascist movement in America, and I wanted to go to the highest governmental authorities and show conclusively that such reports were wholly erroneous.”
Butler reaffirmed his faith in democracy, which in his opinion includes “first, the right to vote; second, the right to speak freely; and third, the right to write and publish whatever one believes.”
Commenting on MacGuire, who has denied all charges made by the former Marine ranking officer, Butler said:
“He is just one of the little fellows in this movement, and I only hope that the government can ferret out the men behind him, and shame them before the people of this country.”
He pointed out that it is dangerous to belittle the importance of developments such as the one he had brought into the open, citing the fact that “all of Europe minimized Hitler a few years before he set up his dictatorship.”
Despite the fact that Butler had fortified his accusations by giving a newspaper reporter a first-hand opportunity of verifying them before he laid them before the Congressional committee, virtually every man whose name was brought into his account of the purported plot, and many others of whom no mention was made, scoffed at the General’s story.
“I know nothing about it,” MacGuire said. “The matter is made out of whole cloth. I deny the story completely.” He admitted, however, that he had been friendly with Butler, and said the General frequently had taken him into his confidence.
General Hugh S. Johnson, former Recovery Administrator, whom Butler had reported as one of those who was to have been offered Fascist leadership if the Marine had refused it, said:
“He had better be pretty damned careful. Nobody said a word to me about anything of this kind, and if they did I’d throw them out of the window. I know nothing about it.”
A Philadelphia story quoted Butler as implicating J. P. Morgan & Co. as would-be backers of a dictatorship scheme.
“Perfect moonshine!” declared Thomas W. Lamont, partner of the firm, in reply. “Too utterly ridiculous to comment upon.”
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, chief of staff of the United States Army, named as another whom financiers of the purported plot were considering approaching, laughed when told at his Washington residence of Butler’s testimony.
“I never heard of the ‘plot,’ ” he said. “It sounds to me like the best laugh story of the year.
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.
