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SUB-SECTION IV

SPREAD OF SOCIALISM IN EDUCATED CIRCLES THROUGH PACIFIST, RELIGIOUS, COLLEGIATE SOCIETIES, ETC.

Chapter I. Emergency Peace Federation, Chicago, Dec. 19, 1914

March, 1915

II.

National Peace Federation, March, 1915-December
4, 1915

971

981

III. Ford Peace Party, Dec. 4, 1915. (Merging into Ford
Neutral Conference at Stockholm, March, 1916-
July, 1916)

988

IV.

American Neutral Conference Committee, July, 1916-
Feb. 3, 1917....

993

V.

Emergency Peace Federation, New York City, Feb. 3,
1917-May, 1917

998

VI. First American Conference for Democracy and Terms

of Peace, May 30 and 31, 1917...

1024

1051

VII. People's Council of America, June 1, 1917 — May, 1919
VIII. Development of American League to Limit Arma-
ments, Dec. 18, 1914, into American Civil Liberties
Union, January, 1920.....

IX. The People's Freedom Union..

X.

Academic and Scholastic Socialist Activities..

XI. Socialism and the Churches...

[967]

1077

1105

'1112

1122

SUB-SECTION IV

SPREAD OF SOCIALISM IN EDUCATED CIRCLES THROUGH PACIFIST, RELIGIOUS, COLLEGIATE SOCIETIES, ETC.

INTRODUCTION

It is the purpose of the Committee in the succeeding chapters of this section to show the use made by members of the Socialist Party of America and other extreme radicals and revolutionaries of pacifist sentiment among people of education and culture in the United States as a vehicle for the promotion of revolutionary Socialist propaganda. The facts here related are important because they show that these Socialists, playing upon the pacifist sentiment in a large body of sincere persons, were able to organize their energies and to capitalize their prestige for the spread of their doctrines.

The group here treated is of particular significance because it is recruited largely from among educators, authors, newspaper writers and the clergy, thus giving entree to the public prints, influencing opinion, and invading public office during the war, also attempting to influence the foreign policy of this country toward Soviet Russia.

In dealing with the subject, the Committee has used only original documents which have come into its possession through subpoena of the files of the National Civil Liberties Bureau and other organizations. The Committee does not seek to question the motives of any person or question the patriotism of the persons named, but in all instances allows the documents to speak for themselves.

These chapters may, in large measure, tend to explain the sympathetic attitude toward Soviet Russia and to the radical and revolutionary groups in this country which is maintained by numerous periodicals and newspapers, as will more fully be shown in the section of this report dealing with propaganda.

[969]

CHAPTER 1

Emergency Peace Federation - October, 1914, to March, 1915 In reading the following report it will be well to recall a statement made during the war by Eduard David, Socialist member of the German Reichstag, in discussing "a good peace" for Ger"Our tactics," said Dr. David, "would be to promote peace currents in enemy countries." (N. Y. Times, June 16,

many:

1917.)

As we go on we shall see that in the United States not only has Socialism been used to spread 66 peace currents," but the pacifist movement has been exploited to inject Socialist and internationalist ideas among the educated classes. The two organizers who from 1914 on were most successful in the employment of this propaganda were Mme. Rosika Schwimmer, of Budapest, Hungary, representative of the International Suffrage Alliance (but in reality German agent), and Louis P. Lochner, a Socialist of German descent and sympathies, who for several years had been Secretary of the International Federation of Students.

Mme. Schwimmer appears to have been the first to engage in a peace movement favorable to Germany. In October, 1914, she spoke before the Woman's Peace Party of Minneapolis and fired her audience into passing a Tentative Program for Constructive Peace, calling for a Conference of Neutrals with the object of bringing peace to warring Europe. This Neutral Conference note, from 1914 on, continued to be sounded more and more insistently in the Pacifist-Socialist movement.

When her work was done in Minneapolis Mme. Schwimmer went to Chicago. There, in co-operation with Louis Lochner and Jane Addams, was held "A preliminary meeting early in November, which arranged for a citizen's mass meeting at the Garrick Theatre on December 5th. The speakers were Mme. Rosika Schwimmer, of Hungary, and Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence, of England. The large and enthusiastic audience present unanimously endorsed the project for a movement for constructive peace, and many individual signatures were received from persons anxious to co-operate." Out of this grew a "meeting of delegates of various peace, labor, civic, religious, social and other organizations, on December 19th," six of the twenty-one represented being Socialist and others, as, for example, the Single Tax Club and the Woman's

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'Minutes Emergency Peace Committee Meeting, Dec. 19, 1914.

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