A warning against the effects of intolerance upon democracy was sounded here yesterday by Attorney General Frank Murphy in an address to employes of the Department of Justice on the occasion of the department’s 150th anniversary.
“The world has been racked for many years by waves of intolerance,” Mr. Murphy declared, “that have destroyed the rights of minorities in other lands and reached right into our own midst.
“We are told by some that the way to recovery and peace is to crush one group or another that supposedly is to blame for our troubles. There is nothing for us in such a course but sorrow and tragedy. America was not built to its present greatness by intolerance, and we will not solve our present troubles by intolerance. We are one people–no matter how many races and religions and nations that make up our population. But we will remain one people only as long as we religiously and meticulously protect the rights and liberties of every individual and group among us.”
The Attorney General sounded a not-too-thinly veiled warning to Nazi-type organizations as he added: “We do not need to close our eyes to the fact that certain elements in our midst may be willing to use the protection of those very principles of equal justice and equal rights to all to promote and foster a system under which the principles themselves will be destroyed. I do not believe we would serve democracy by standing silent and apathetic while the agents of autocracy and subversive elements plan and scheme and work to establish a system that would mean the end of democracy and freedom and equal rights for all. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion–can and must be preserved.
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