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REDS PARADE HERE IN RITCHIE PROTEST
Score Maryland Lynching, but
Governor Fails to Appear at
Republican Club.
DINERS HEAR HIS TELEGRAM
Dean Pound, S. W. Richardson and
General Harbord Talk on Forces
That Menace the Constitution.
While a message from Governor Ritchie of Maryland, regretting his absence from the speakers' dais, was being read yesterday at a luncheon in the National Republican Club, Communists marched through West Fortieth Street singing the "International," denouncing the Governor and shouting protests against the recent lynching of a Negro in Salisbury, Md.
With advance information that the Communists were to make Governor Ritchie the target for their protests, Inspector Thomas F. Walsh of the Third Inspection District and Captain Michael Wall of the West Twentieth Street station were on hand with five sergeants, fifty patrolmen, mounted men and a reserve force of 200 scattered through Bryant Park and in the rear plaza of the New York Public Library.
The gathering, including only a few Negroes, assembled in a hall at 417 West Fifty-third Street, where leaders urged the demonstration against "the liberal Governor who supports lynching." Reaching Sixth Avenue, about 100 demonstrators marched to Fortieth Street and halted at the corner to engage in
oratory-Unaware that Governor Ritchie was absent, the group, with placards held aloft, turned to the club at 54 West Fortieth Street. Slogans carried by the Communists bore inscriptions such as: "Down with lynching, Jimcrowism and discrimination"; "For the right of the Negro majorities to rule themselves"; "Release the nine Scottsboro boys."
The Communists marched past the club and halted in the street at the south side of the library. At the commands of the police the crowd dispersed and no attempt was made to reassemble. The demonstration was inspired by
the lynching on the night of Dec. 4 of Matthew Williams, the 35-year-old confessed slayer of Daniel J. Elliott, a wealthy manufacturer of Salisbury.
Detained by "Serious Condition."
In his telegram, read at the luncheon by General James G. Harbord, president of the club, Governor Ritchie said he had not allowed anything to prevent his addressing the club as a scheduled speaker, "except a serious condition which requires my personal presence in this State." General Harbord explained that the message had summarized the points on which Governor Ritchie had expected to speak, and quoted the Governor's telegram as follows:
"The forces which menace the Constitution (the subject for discussion at the luncheon) are the forces which menace all those governmental ideals which have made us a great nation and which have been tried and tested in the school of experience. Nothing could so chill our national spirit or retard our returning prosperity or the solution of our political problems as" to have our leaders or our people or the growing youth of our land lose faith in American institutions and in the American governmental system, or fail to realize that the revolutionary ideas prevalent in some countries abroad and advocated to an extent here are wholly foreign to the genius of the American people.
"It may not be for us to say what form of government best fits the peoples of other lands, but our form of government is the outgrowth of the long years of a colonial democracy striving to become a nation. Its strength lies in the fact that it gives expression to the traditions, ideals and free spirit that animated our forefathers in their century-old efforts for self-government."
Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard Law School, discussing "Forces Menacing the Constitution," saw certain threats from two sides, namely, from "those impatient with any deviation from what they have been brought up on, and a corresponding danger that, in times of political upheaval, we might have sudden, rash and ill-considered changes."
Written for the Future,
He declared that "the glory of our Constitution is that it is a document
for the far-distant future as well as for the present." Changes in the Constitution were to be expected to suit changing social and economic conditions, he declared, adding that the Constitution was safe so long as the Anglo-Saxon frame of mind was maintained.
Seth W. Richardson, Assistant Attorney General of the United States, asserted that anarchistic and communistic doctrines presented no more menace in this country today than they had in past years. The real menace to the country, he declared, was in attempts to nullify the Constitution.
"I do not conceive that fear of
war against us, or fear of our further participation in wars of other nations, constitutes what may be said today to be a serious menace either against our country or its form of government," he said. "I see no nation of which it may be said that it has any purpose in mind to attack us, and our experience some thirteen years ago would seem to present a sufficient record of experience to fully protect us for the future against military participation in the wars of other people."
General Harbord remarked that "thirteen years after the war, which in the facile phrase of President Wilson was! to make the world safe for democracy, i there are those who think they hear a call to make democracy safe for the world." He said in the "problems that face us this Winter will come the test of popular government," and "as a greater people we shall survive the starm that rages around us only if we have the cold courage to face realities."
The luncheon marked the opening of the twenty-fourth season of nonpartisan Saturday luncheon discussions at the club. The speeches were broadcast over the National Broadcasting Company's system.
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