Fr. Grimley Attacks U.S.A. Press Assisted by Commonweal Editor From Our Own Correspondent
NEW YORK.
17,562 dollars (£3,500) in cash and pledges was raised for the relief of Spanish Distress after a giant meeting at Madison Square Garden, New York, at which many prominent Catholics, including two Englishmen spoke, deprecating the attitude of the American Press in the Spanish Civil War. 12,000 people were present at the meeting which was arranged by the American Committee for Spanish Relief in collaboration with the American Catholic papers. Commonweal, Brooklyn Tablet and America.
The challenge to the Press was made by Michael Williams, editor of Commonweal. in the course of a speech in which Mr. Williams revealed the partisan bias of dispatches from American correspondents in Spain.
Mr. Williams was supporting Fr. Bernard Grimley, until recently editor of the English Catholic Times, who made the first speech of the evening and demanded why the American Press had ignored the factual details of the torture of priests, nuns and the faithful of Spain. Fr. Grimley concluded with a plea for the whole truth to be brought to light. He was greeted with tremendous applause.
The most dynamic of the speakers, Fr. Edward Lodge Curran. President of the American Association Against Communistn, aroused the audience with a denuncia
tion of the duplicity of United Front efforts in America, which, he said, had deceived so many into believing that the Communists in the U.S.A. are defending democracy. just as they claim the Reds in Spain are defending democracy.
Dr. Curran cited facts of Bolshevist practice in Russia which disproved Communist claims of friendship for democracy.
In the course of his speech he revealed that a Communist mass meeting held a short while ago in Madison Square Gar den, the Leftist audience was not content to raise funds for food and medicine, but instead clamoured, " What about money for machine guns and bullets?"
The final speaker of the evening, Professor E. Allison Peers, of Liverpool University, author of Spanish Tragedy, described the events which led up to the civil war, showing graphically how Spain was pushed closer and closer to the brink of civil war by the plotting and violence of Left Wing elements.