Plans of the Wisconsin State Teachers’ College band here to go on a subsidized trip to Germany and give concerts there have stirred a storm of protests.
Letters have been written to local newspapers and to the college protesting the proposed tour as a propaganda scheme of the Nazi government. The John Reed Club, artists and writers’ group, sent a resolution to the members of the band urging them to reconsider their decision to go.
In response Dr. Frank E. Baker, president of the college, and Hugo Anhalt, band director, issued statement denying the journey was to be subsidized by the German government, despite the fact that the fifty-two members of the band are to be charged only $100 each for the round trip from Milwaukee.
“The band does not go as guests of the German government,” Baker said. “Each student pays his own personal expenses. Meals are to be paid for in part by concerts contracted for by private agencies in Germany. The college had been considering this tour long before the Nazis came into power. I am strongly anti-Nazi myself, but if I wanted to go to Germany as an interested observer, I should go.”
GERMAN GROUPS SPONSOR TOUR
Anhalt admitted that “it is true our students are to be carried at greatly reduced rates,” but these reductions are made available “by the organizers of the tour and only on condition that the band give a number of concerts in Germany to which no admission fee will be charged.” Several German educational and travel organizations are sponsoring the tour.
One protesting writer declared “the trip was arranged after several of our leading universities thumbed down the offer” and added that “the band concerts will be preceded by speeches of national socialists that the policies of the new Germany are humanly right.” The writer urged the trip be cancelled.
The John Reed Club pointed out that the students were being offered an eighty-day trip for the $100-a tour that was listed in German travel leaflets at $563 for other persons. This tremendous reduction was declared to be clearly a subsidy to win sympathy for the Nazi regime.
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