Professor Robert Morss Lovett, of Chicago, well-known liberal educator and writer, has withdrawn from association with Edwin Emerson’s Friends of Germany, it was made known yesterday when Bernard G. Richards, chairman of the Jewish Council of Greater New York, released to the Jewish Daily Bulletin copies of correspondence that had taken place during the last week between him and the professor. Professor Lovett’s name is prominently featured on the letterheads of the organization.
This revelation comes close upon the news printed in Sunday’s Jewish Daily Bulletin that Colonel William Donovan, Republican candidate for Governor of New York in the last election, had also had his name featured on the Friends of Germany’s letterhead while in reality he too was not a member.
Professor Lovett made public, through Mr. Richard’s office, a letter which he recently wrote to Emerson, after the latter had induced him to join the Friends of Germany, which is seeking to organize sentiment in the United States in favor of the Hitler regime.
FIRST IMPRESSION CORRECT
“I am sorry to say that my first impression that I ought not to join your Friends of Germany is correct,” Professor Lovett wrote to Emerson. “The chairman of an organization which is responsible for the protest against anti-Semitism in Germany—(Ed.)— a copy of which I enclose, ought not to be a member of an organization the object of which is to correct occasional errors in detail in the dispatches from Germany.
“For one such false or exaggerated report there must be hundreds of cases of the imprisonment of Jews and particularly Communists, of which no report is made. I gathered from your second letter that you agreed with me that what Germany needs at the present time is a candid friend to tell her exactly what decent people think of Hitler and his government.”
Professor Lovett told Emerson further that “it doesn’t seem to me the time to correct the record in detail.” He said: “Your effort to do this gives a false impression of your organization, or at any rate a different one from my original understanding.
“Unless, therefore, the Friends of Germany are ready to make a forthright condemnation of Hitler’s policy, which is justifying the worst things that were ever said of Germany during the War, I must reluctantly part company with them.”
Professor Lovett wrote to Mr. Richards that Emerson “in his first letter to me gave a false impression of his organization.”
MCCLELLAN LETTER
Mr. Richards yesterday released to the Bulletin a copy of a letter which he received from George B. McClellan, one-time Mayor of New York, in connection with the Emerson organization.
“The president of that society informed me,” Mr. McClellan wrote, “that its purpose was friendship with the German people of all races and creeds as distinguished from the German government, and that its agents in Germany were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers).
“My respect and admiration for the Jewish race is so great, I have so many friends among its members that I would be the last to approve of any movement tending to support the medieval persecution under which it is suffering in Germany.”
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