First New York Rally of Silver Shirts Fails, Speakers Don’t Speak

Although their meeting proved to be a failure, the Silver Shirts indicated in their first public demonstration in New York held at the Kreuzer Halle on East 86th Street Friday night that they would present a united front with Nazi elements in this city and forecast possible unity among all Fascist organizations operating in this area. Members of the League of Friends of New Germany attended the first assembly.

The presence of detectives from the alien squad discouraged speakers from assuming the rostrum and the meeting broke up after an audience of approximately 100 men had waited vainly for someone to call the meeting to order.

Indicating the common vein of sympathy experienced by the American Nazi organization and the Silver Shirts, a revitalized type of Ku Klux Klan under the direction of William Dudley Pelley of Asheville, North Carolina, it was disclosed by the management of Kreuzer Halle that the League of Friends of New Germany had donated their hall, normally occupied for regular Friday night meetings, to the Silver Shirts.

MOSTLY GERMANS PRESENT

Approximately 90 percent of those attending last night’s meeting spoke German. Among them one recognized many faces familiar at meetings of the League of Friends of New Germany. Side by side, an American newspaper vendor and a young German sold copies of Amerika’s Deutsche Post, Nazi organ published in New York, and Liberation, the official Silver Shirt publication edited and owned by Pelley in North Carolina. Both carried scurrilous attacks on Jews and Communists, frequently identifying the two as one and the same.

For fully an hour the audience awaited speakers who were to relate the community of purpose of the Silver Shirt movement in the United States and the Nazi movement in Germany and the United States.

The assembly grew restive as 9 o’clock neared; and rumors filtered into the room indicating that “Lafayette”, “Eberhardt”, and others cited as speakers had gone to a nearby political rally.

A news photographer announced his presence with attempts to shoot flashlight pictures. The assembly objected; and members of the audience were on the verge of throwing the photographer out, when members of the alien squad of the city police came to his rescue. Other police put in an appearance. The audience edged out of the hall, and the lights went out.

LACK OF PLANNING SHOWN

The first thrust here of the Silver Shirt movement which has rapidly developed in the South and Mid-West was weak and abortive. The Friday night meeting indicated lack of organization and planning.

Only a handful of persons knew of the meeting. It was first scheduled for the Turn Halle, but was shunted to the Kreuzer Hall when arrangements were made to hold a political rally there. A hundred or more came to the Turn Halle and were unable either to find members of the Silver Shirts or to learn where the meeting was being held.

It is understood that a Silver Shirt meeting will be held again in the near future with wider publicity given it to lure more prospective adherents to the Pelley ranks. The groundwork has been laid for the creation of a New York branch of Silver Shirts during the last few weeks.

CALL TO “TRUE” CHRISTIANS

At meetings of the United German Societies and other organizations believed to have been brought under the Hitler spell, Silver Shirt pamphlets have been distributed with reckless profuseness. They represent the first call of the group to “true Christians” in a fight to overcome the “Jewish international network”.

The pamphlet describes a plaguegerm allegedly in the possession of Jewish Communists throughout the world, a pestilence of hoof and mouth disease controlled and ready for unloosing by the same elements, fatal disease germs ready for insertion into canned goods on the Pacific Coast — all of which will be turned loose at the appointed moment to wreak Communist vengeance on Americans. Liberation reckons there are 15,000,000 Reds in the United States waiting for the signal.

“The only man in Europe who correctly understands the tie-up between Communism and the predatory elements among the Hebrews is Hitler,” the pamphlet warns. In the same category, Pelley declares that everybody, excepting himself, in the United States is out of step.

The pamphlet attributes Senator Morrow’s death to the aftermath of a Jewish banquet, the world depression and rise of Communism to the tyranny of Jewish bankers, and other unpleasant events to Jewish sources.

WILL SAVE AMERICA

“Do you know that right here in America there is already such a preventive and protective militia, long working under cover, called The Silver Shirts, and that its representatives in 46 of our 48 American states are fully apprised of these facts, and more, some of which would prevent you sleeping soundly tonight?” the pamphlet asks.

It further demands, “Do you know that this strictly Christian Militia, The Silver Shirts of America, means to save America as Mussolini and his blackshirts saved Italy, and Hitler and his brownshirts saved Germany. . . .?”

The pamphlet reveals information to the effect that “in 25 states the military plan of operation, together with recruiting, is proceeding swiftly.”

All persons over 18 years of age “of reasonably sound health and not afraid to risk life and limb for the country” are asked by the pamphlet to take “the Oath of Consecration and step out as a True Christian Soldier, garbed in a shirt of Silver, with the great scarlet L. emblazoned on the banner and over the heart, standing for Love, Loyalty, and Liberation.”