May Call on Justice Dep’t in Nazi Probe

The Department of Justice will be asked to take a hand in the Congressional investigation of subversive propaganda activities in the United States, it was learned today.

The investigation committee, headed by Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts, intends to report specific cases of law violations uncovered by the investigation to the Department of Justice for action.

While no clear-cut line of procedure has yet been developed by the committee, the preliminary phases of the investigation look toward the ultimate prosecution of those individuals revealed by the investigation as being engaged in subversive propaganda activities which are contrary to law. The committee’s probe also looks toward obtaining facts which will serve as a basis for legislative action by Congress.

The State Department may also be called upon to cooperate in the propaganda probe. The committee has under consideration charges that official mail pouches of German diplomats have been brought into this country filled with subversive propaganda.

It is expected that the committee, in addition to its own investigation, may ask the State Department to look into these charges.

PROPAGANDA BROUGHT TO LIGHT

Since its organization a few weeks ago the committee has been meeting once or twice each week in executive session. Arrangements are being made to hold public hearings which are expected to begin sometime during the middle of May. In addition to hearings in Washington it is expected that the committee will meet in New York and Boston and may hold one or two public hearings in the middle west, on the Pacific coast and in the south.

While the investigation committee is outlining its plans, the problem of subversive propaganda activities in the United States is coming to the attention more and more of greater numbers of Congressmen and the general public.

The lengths to which Nazi propaganda mongers would go was clearly indicated on Capitol Hill during the past week with the receipt by Congressmen of a new publication called the “American Illustrated News,” published in Berlin, and sent to the American law-makers to “sell” them the virtues of Hitler and the Nazi form of government.

GERMANY AND HER PART

An editorial in the publication says “it is Germany’s fondest wish to do away with the atmosphere of distrust which is poisoning the whole world and to do her part toward restoring that atmosphere of friendship and mutual help which alone can secure to the whole world peace and prosperity.”

The masthead says that the magazine is represented in this country by the Hamburg-American Line and by the North German Lloyd.

In view of former charges that these two German steamship companies have been instrumental in bringing Nazi propaganda literature into this country, it is likely that Representative McCormack will have his committee look further into these charges definitely to determine the part these two campanies are playing in furthering the spread of subversive propaganda in this country.

The attention of the Senate has been called to subversive propaganda activities by Senator Thomas D. Schall of Minnesota. Senator Schall told his colleagues that he had received a letter from Emil E. Holmes of Minneapolis, former commander of the Disabled American Veterans, and in 1932 Democratic candidate for Congress, calling attention to “a self-styled organization known as the ‘Crusader White Shirts-American Fascisti’.” This organization is headed by George W. Christians.

WHITE SHIRTS MILITARISTIC

With the letter were enclosed two pamphlets describing the organization, “saying that it will be a military organization armed with wooden staffs, officered and drilled in accordance with United States Army regulations, wearing white shirts with a large red crusader cross on the front middle, and with small crossed American and red crusader flags on the left breast, sort of a Bolshevik, Hitler, Ku Klux Klan all in one,” Senator Schall said.

“If we have not the proper facilities, we should either cooperate with the House or set up an organization of our own to help uncover these foreign influences inimical to our form of government and to our people,” Senator Schall told the Senate.

The activities of the Crusader White Shirts and Christians, the organization’s leader, are under investigation by the McCormack committee. Another organization being scrutinized by the committee is the Silver Shirts, headed by William Dudley Pelley. Both Christians and Pelley may be called before the committee to tell what their objectives may be.

MRS. KRAUSS ELECTED

Mrs. Harry Krauss was elected president of the Mount Vernon section of the National Council of Jewish Women at a meeting at the home of Mrs. Paul Alper.