600 Colleges Asked to Give Scholarships to Refugees

Six hundred colleges were asked today to aid victims of intolerance by bringing students here from lands of persecution to complete their studies on scholarships, in a letter sent out by the Intercollegiate Committee to Aid Student Refugees, a newly formed organization of students of all faiths in 100 colleges.

The drive to provide tuition and living expenses for refugee students “voices the determination of American students to fight religious and racial intolerance wherever they find it,” the letter said. “In working for the refugees from Fascism abroad, American students are demonstrating, at a time when such a show of strength is sorely needed in the world, their conviction that they will preserve a humane and democratic form of government in their native land.”

Mayor LaGuardia, Representative Bruce Barton, Mgr. John A. Ryan and Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, are among those who have consented to sponsor the committee, which is an outgrowth of the Harvard Committee to Aid German Student Refugees. The committee plans an intercollegiate conference in Cleveland on Feb. 17 and 18. Organizations sponsoring its work include the National Student Federation of America, the National Intercollegiate Christian Council, the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, the American Student Union and the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany.

The Council Against Intolerance in America today endorsed the petition of representative Protestant and Catholic clergymen, presented at the White House last week, calling for admission of a number of refugee children into the United States, under laws to be enacted by Congress. The Council said that such action would present the American people with the opportunity to express in concrete terms, their profound sympathy for innocent victims of persecution abroad.