Charges that Dr. Richard Sellet of the German Embassy in Washington came to Yale University to spread Nazi propaganda among students and faculty members were reported under investigation here today.
A protest against permitting Dr. Sallet to speak yesterday on "The New Foundation of the German Commonwealth" was circulated on the campus by the Yale chapter of the National Student League, which accused the University Germanic Club of having attempted to keep the lecture secret.
"The secrecy makes us of the League doubly certain that Dr. Sallet comes to Yale with the definite intention of spreading Nazi propaganda, neither to the benefit of the University or the Germanic Club," the protest stated.
"There is no necessity for us to point out in detail at this juncture the tragic plight of Hitler’s Germany, for it is common knowledge rooted in an abundance of vertifiable fact that the ‘new foundations of the German Commonwealth’ have brought truculent oppression to religious and working class groups of Germany and have instituted a university system which is an apologetic fiction."
The Yale Daily News, undergraduate newspaper, added its editorial voice to the storm of unfavorable student comment, urging President James Rowland Angell to forbid Dr. Sallet’s appearance and pointing out that "to admit such a representative of Fascism in the name of good will, hospitality or academic freedom is to hold before the student body a representative of a system which has
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horrified the world with a most complete and systematic denial and repression of these very qualities."
SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
According to the News, there is an active Nazi movement on the campus, which sends emissaries on secret visits to the dormitories, to leave pro-Hitler literature at the doors of students’ rooms.
Prof. A. B. Benson of the Yale Graduate School, chairman of the Germanic Club, was inclined to minimize the entire affair, declaring that Dr. Sallet’s visit here yesterday was an informal one and was not deemed important enough to merit announcement through usual University channels. He said further that the lecture was not open to the public but was intended purely for members of the club.
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