The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-06-12


 "GentIemen, the committee has
 carefully surveyed this situation. It
 is one of very great delicacy. We feel
 that we should deprecate any relig- 1 ious wars in this country, and since
 fixing today for a hearing, we have
 received information from the State l Department that has convinced us Of
 the wisdom of adjourning for a few days until we can get the final report | from our officials abroad.
 For your information, I will state
 that sometime ago, a committee com | posed of Minister Gibson, Dr. Began and Col. Bailey, was instructed to in- vesttgate these alleged outrages in Poland I do not know whether they
 were instructed to go into the Rou-
 manian affair or not, but that is i'm material We have a. report this morning from Minister Gibson that ] shows that these reports are very much exaggerated, and we feel that we should await any action on these
 resolutions until the committee com posed of Minister Gibson, Dr. Began i and Col Bailey shall have made its 1 report The probabilities that the | report will be satisfactory to every l body and there will be no necessity l for any further action on the part of 1 the committee.
 1 pose to go into the hearings. We did
 not have this informatmion, that is, | the report of Minister Gibson until l this morning. Of course, that has ichanged the situation very consider ably.
 The committee is unanimous in re- ga rIl to this matter, and we sincerely
 hope that you will impress upon your people at home the necessity that this 2 NI1f,r1c q
 and tens of thousands of people have
 heard stories---well, that are not true.
 We trust that you will go back home and say to your people, especially to
 your newspapers, to await until we get the report of the representatives ! of our government in Poland as to the facts and then they are at perfect I liberty to draw whatever conclusions they see fit.
 1 There is another element fin the
 matter that I think you ought to
 know. According to the evidence be-
 fore the committee, there was a. meet | ing in New York some four or five
 weeks ago of a number of prominen Jewish people, and they arranged for : a systematic campaign of protest throughout the United States The plans were apparently well prepared, because, as you all know, meetings I nave been Reld m all O1 the prluCipil cities of the country. It struck me at the time, that it was quite significant that there was no protest over the killing of the Jews in the Bolshevik country, Russia and Novabryema- Ac cor1ing to my information, believe it is safe to say that there are 3GO and probably 800 Jews killed in Russia to
 one in Poland. For instance, I mo-
 ticed in the morning Post on the front
 page an article with regard to the
 killing of several thousand Jews in
 Russia three or four days ago.
 Now, our military authorities
 port to us that there is a German
 newspaper in Kowna; that is con-
 trolled and owned by Germans: that it is sending out many of these re-
 ports which appear in the papers in
 this couyntry. The view over there is that it is certainly not in the interest of Poland or the Jews, but for the
 purpose of impressing the world with the fact that Poland is not capable of sef-governrnent.
 ''In view of all this uncertainty, and the fact that we are absolutely un- able to secure enough competent evi- dence to justify in making findings of fact on an important question like this, the committee thought it was, in the interest of justice to every one, that we should await this report from the representatives of our govern ment in Poland This report is ex- pected within a very few days; we will not be surprised if it is before the committee this week. In the mean time, I intend, acting in connection with the State Department, to give out an interview stating the reasons for our present adjournment.
 Let us go back again. I do want to impress this upon you: You all
 realize that there is a great deal of unrest in this country. and anything that tends to excite it is very damag- ing The fact is, if it were not for the hope that some action by this com Inittee and on this matter would stop the ilI-feeling in America between the i Jews and the Poles, I would be much inclined to lay the whole matter on the table I believe that we are per forming a service to America in al- laying this agitation It is the hope of i every man on this committeethat you will all go back home and await this report of the representatives of our government on this question. Then, after you have the facts, draw what ever conclusions you see fit, but do lnot allow the people to be excited and
 wrought up as they have been during
 the last month
 l T might 20 further and say, not ex- pressing the view of the committed l but my own view, that I am getting
 very weary of nationalities organizing l in America. You have the Jewish Americans, the Russian-Americans, tthe German-Americans and the Ital- lian-Amr1cans and clashes like this oc- cur and you have great public excite ment. I think we had enough experi- ence in the last war to do away with
 that agitation in this country.
 l Before you go. permit me to ask
 you again, as good Americans. to
 cease this agitation and stop these | meetings until you know the facts, re- lunennTerfng at all times that we are