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Quakers Disavow Link with Friends of Germany Claimed in Prospectus

August 3, 1933
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The foreign centers of the Society of Friends (Quakers) are in no way connected with Edwin Emerson’s Friends of Germany, it was stated in a letter received Wednesday by Bernard G. Richards, chairman of the Jewish Council of Greater New York, from Clarence C. Pickett, executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia.

“Without asking us, Colonel Emerson announced that he expected to use our foreign centers as his agents,” Mr. Pickett wrote to Mr. Richards. “We have not been in any way involved in his organization and have cautioned our centers against such cooperation. I think Colonel Emerson is not intentionally dishonest, but he has little appreciation of the responsibilities one assumes in the type of organization he is promoting.”

Professor George B. McClellan, former mayor of New York; Professor Robert Morss Lovett, of Chicago, well-known liberal, and Colonel William J. Donovan, Republican candidate for governor of New York in the last election, all wrote to Mr. Richards last month disclaiming membership in the Friends of Germany, which has been accused of being pro-Hitlerite and anti-Semitic, despite the fact that their names were prominently featured on Emerson’s organization’s letterheads.

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