A stinging attack on the League of Nations and the proposed cotton barter with Germany was made by Samuel Untermyer to the evident delight of more than 1,500 supporters of the Anti-Nazi League who crowded the Hotel Edison Wednesday night to greet the world boycott leader and his associate American delegates to the International Boycott Conference in London.
Throughout his address Mr. Untermyer emphasized the fact that the boycott is not entirely Jewish. He cited organized labor, the Catholic and Protestant Churches, the women of the world, the Masonic orders and the Jews as the bulwarks of the boycott.
ATHLETES WON’T COMPETE
No Jewish athletes, he predicted, will compete in the Olympic Games at Berlin in 1936. “I do not believe that any lover of true sport or fair play will lend encouragement to this gangster government by participating in the games,” he said.
“I have numerous letters from non-Jews, champions and world renowned sportsmen, assuring me that they will not have anything to do with these games if held in Berlin—if the Hitler regime is still in existence,” the boycott leader declared.
BATTLE IS CHAIRMAN
George Gordon Battle, chairman, greeted the delegates. He paid special tribute to the activities of Mr. Untermyer. Other speakers included Richard J. Beamish, former secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Mrs. Mark Harris, both delegates; Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum of the American Jewish Congress, and Gerhadt Seger, former German Social-Democrat Deputy.
Mr. Beamish, Catholic of Irish descent, opened his address with a demand for action and organization. “This organization of ours, properly financed and organized throughout the civilized nations, has the power to destroy Hitlerism within a year, perhaps even within six months,” he said.
“I want to see sales stopped of all German goods in all department stores; I want to see German ships without passengers; I want to see German representatives in this free country ringed around with icy silence,” he shouted.
WOULD SPREAD BOYCOTT
“Every embassy and consulate and steamship line and importing house that handles German goods would be quarantined as though afflicted with smallpox. I would carry the boycott into nations like Argentine, Brazil and Chile, that have not yet been reached by us,” he said.
“In contemplating the fate of women in Germany, Mrs. Harris pointed out, “we must regard their cruel treatment as a danger signal to women all over the world. What has happened to women under the Nazi regime may happen to women in America and other countries, if we do not use our rights to preserve our rights.”
Dr. Paul Hutchinson, managing editor of the Christian Century, a Protestant, also a delegate to the London conference, is now in the Saar Basin to observe conditions there.
Telegrams were received from Mayor LaGuardia and B. C. Vladeck, expressing regret at their inability to attend the reception.
Edmund Zalinski, enlisting in the Union Army, was promoted to a lieutenancy at the age of sixteen for gallantry in action and after the Civil War continued in the Army, where he invented a number of artillery devices.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
