Dr. Derry Retracts Derogatory Remarks

Dr. George Hermann Derry, president of Marygrove College, has expressed his regret at what he called a misinterpretation of his remarks made at the closing session of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems held here recently. He was quoted as charging that a small group of Jews have been responsible for the economic depression, and that they were responsible for the length of its duration.

In a statement issued here, Dr. Derry said:

“It was most unfortunate that a single phrase of mine, torn from its context in an extempore address and enveloped in phraseology that was not my own, should have appeared in the press and given occasion to my Jewish friends to interpret a single adjective as an aspersion on their race. Nothing could possibly have been more remote from my meaning or intent.

“In my remarks, in which I was discussing what I consider the four chief causes of the depression, I mentioned, as one factor, gold and the influence of international movements of gold on prices in the markets of the world: in this connection, I did once inadvertently use the phrase, ‘a very small group of international Jews’, alluding to the great international families like the Rothschilds, with whose position and power in the European banking world you cannot be unfamiliar. But sensing vaguely at once, even amid the excitement of delivery, how this phrase might be misconstrued and distorted out of its prospective, I immediately corrected the expression to ‘international bankers’ and ‘international financial capitalists’, which I employed several times in what was, after all, but a small portion of an address devoted for the most part to totally different phases of the economic sitaution.”