Clergymen Report on Good Will Tour

The three clergymen-Catholic, Protestant and Jewish-who traveled 9,000 miles and visited 38 cities in a good will tour, gave a personal account of their prilgrimage at a meeting of their prilgrimage at a meeting of the National Conference of Jews and Christians at the Hotel Pennsylvania last night.

They are Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron, Father J. Elliot Ross and Rev. Everett R. Clinchy. They returned to New York City after two and a half months travel throughout the country.

The three clergymen discussed the various episodes in their tour, which covered the entire country, from coast to coast. Twenty-three broadcasts were made, and over 60,000 persons attended the 119 meetings. At some meetings there was an attendance of over nine thousand.

“Never before have a Catholic priest, Protestant Minister and Rabbi undertaken a similar enterprise,” declared Rabbi Lazaron. “It could so easily have become a stunt, and yet I can assure you that the whole thing was done on a level of earnestness and dignity befitting so fine an enterprise. It was not that we believed the problem of Christian and Jewish relations would be solved by this one tour. It was rather that we desired first to study the problem ourselves, and then try to set in motion some influences which would make for better understanding.”

“From the experience of our trip.” Father Ross said, “several definite activities suggest themselves.” He suggested that representatives of the three great religions in America should appear before assembles in every high school of the country, and that high school text books should contain paragraphs on religious freedom.

Summing up their conclusions from their tour, Rabbi Lazaron concluded, “There are just two ways by which we might achieve national unity. The one way is the way of the demigod, the way of terrorism, the way of oppression. That is the way of the destruction of democracy, that is the way that inevitably leads to ruin. The other is the way of mutual appreciation, of cooperation. It is the way of unity which rises above differences. It is the hard way, but it is the true way. It is the American way. It is the way the National Conference of Jews and Christians chooses for the future of our country, that we may educate the adult so far as we can and the coming generation of our youth, to the attitude of appreciation that they may rise above differences and work together for the country that all of us love.”

Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes, cochairman of the Conference, declared that it is for the maintenance and growth of the American tradition of religious freedom “that the Conference wishes to multiply throughout the length and breadth of the land the cooperative enterprise demonstrated here tonight.”

At 1:15 yesterday afternoon the clergymen spoke over the radio, on Station WABC, giving an outline of their trip substantially the same as last evening.