Hayes, Noted Catholic Historian Hits at Coughlin; Press Applauds Radio Ban on Priest

Denials of assertions regarding the Jews broadcast by Father Charles E. Coughlin poured in from all sides, today, while newspapers joined in denouncing “the radio priest” and even a prominent Catholic scholar, Prof. Carleton J.H. Hayes, made an implied attack on him as a menace to the American nation and to his religion.

The New York Times declared editorially that “responsible persons everywhere will approve the action of those radio stations (YMCA, New York; WJJD, Chicago, and WIND, Gary, Ind.) that refused to broadcast a speech plainly calculated to stir up religious prejudice, and strife.” The Post asserted: “Father Coughlin doesn’t seem to understand that he’s living in America which traditionally has been sympathetic and helpful at all times to the persecuted of the world — and no BUTS about it.”

Contradictions of statements by Father Coughlin came from Alexander Kerensky, ex-Russian Premier, who denied there were any Jews in the first revolutionary government; the United States Secret Service in Washington, which denied the existence of a purported “Report” on Jewish influence in the Russian revolution; Leon Trotsky and Kuhn, Loeb and Co., who both denied that the banking firm had contributed financially to the revolution, and the British Library of Information in New York, which proved the non-existence of a purported British White Paper quoting the alleged Secret Service report.

Meanwhile, public controversy continued to be stirred by the action of the three stations in barring Father Coughlin’s address last Sunday for his failure to submit a script in advance, which was requested because his speech of the previous Sunday had been regarded as inciting. At Station YMCA it was said that scores of people had telephoned and made vilifying statements against the station, threatening to boycott it.

That Father Coughlin in lacks the sympathy of Catholics in his campaign to “explain” Nazi persecution by linking Jews to Communism was indicated last night when Prof. Hayes, Columbia University historian and Catholic co-chairman of the National Conference of Jews and Christians, received loud applause at an N.C.J.C. dinner for an attack on priests who spoke for racialism and persecution.

“Under God all men are brothers,” the Catholic scholar asserted. “That is the great basic teaching of all our religious groups. It is the teaching of the great Jewish prophets, of every Protestant denomination, and emphatically of the Catholic Church from its early fathers to the present Pope Pius XI. There is no footing among us for doctrines of racialism or practices of persecution; and if a Jew, a Protestant, even a Catholic priest, speaks or acts otherwise, he is a menace not only to the American nation but to the religion which he professes and wrongs.”

This statement drew the loudest applause of the evening from the 1,500 religious, civic and business leaders present at the dinner in the Hotel Astor, which marked the induction of Prof. Arthur H. Compton of Chicago as Protestant co-chairman of the N.C.J.C. Dr. Hayes’ auditors seemed unanimous in inferring that Father Coughlin was meant. Asked later whom he had in mind, Prof. Hayes advised his listeners and readers to use their imaginations.

As the controversy over Father Coughlin’s speeches waxed hotter, the sources of his assertions regarding Jewish influence in the revolution were called into question. The principal source quoted by the priest is the book “The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World” by Rev. Denis Fahey, Professor of Philosophy and Church History at the Senior House of Studies, Blackrock College, Dublin, who is listed on the title page with the titles C.S. Sp. B.A., D.Ph. and D.D. The book was published in 1935 by Browne and Nolan, Ltd., of Dublin and London, and contains a page of authorization as follows: “Cum permissu Superiorum Religiosorum. Nihil Obstat: Gulielmus Coffey, S.T.L., Censor. Imprimi protest: Jeremias, Episcopus Waterfordienss et Lismorensis.” A copy of the book was purchased today at the American Review Bookshop, 231 W. 58 St., operated by Seward Collins, who is active in anti-Communist work.

This book, in Chapter V, “The Agents of the Revolution,” publishes, beginning on page 88, the purported Secret Service document on financing of the revolution, allegedly transmitted by the French High Commissioner to his Government, and published by “Documentation Catholique” of Paris on March 6, 1920. This supposed document cites Jewish banking families as the financiers of the revolution, gives a purported list of 25 persons influential in the revolution, calling 24 of them Jewish, and seeks to tie up “Jewish multi-millionaires and Jewish proletarians” by stating that Judas Magnes (apparently meaning Judah L. Magnes), subsidized by Jacob Schiff, was in close contact with the Poale Zion, which allegedly sought to establish “international supremacy of the Jewish Labour Movement.”

The assertions of this alleged document were contradicted as follows:

M. Kerensky said in Chicago that there was not a single Jew in the first government established by the revolution under Prince Lvov, whom M. Kerensky succeeded as Premier six months later. He declared that credits as well as diplomatic recognition for the government of 1917 came first from the United States Government. He dismissed as “fantastic” the charge that Jews and Jewish bankers abroad fomented the Russian revolution.

M. Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolshevists who overthrew the Kerensky government, telegraphed the New York Times from Mexico City that “the name of Jacob Schiff means nothing to me — if Mr. Coughlin indicated an important sum, then it must be pure invention.”

Chief Frank J. Wilson of the Secret Service stated in Washington that a search had been made through the files and in the memories of members of the service on duty from 1916 to 1920 “for such investigation or report as that which Father Coughlin discusses” and “it is quite certain that no such report was ever made by the United States Secret Service.”

Kuhn, Loeb and Co. stated: “The firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. has never had any financial relations, or other relations with any government in Russia, whether Czarist, Kerensky or Communist…neither the firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. nor any of its partners, past or present, assisted in any way to finance the Communist revolution in Russia or anywhere else.”