Anti-semitism Laid to No-war Body by One of Its Founders

With Verne Marshall, head of the No Foreign War Committee, scheduled to speak at a meeting tonight on the same platform as supporters of Father Charles E. Coughlin, it was reported that O.K. Armstrong, national director and one of the founders of the committee, would resign his post because he believed the organization to be anti-democratic and anti-Semitic.

Marshall was to speak tonight at a rally in Queens organized by an isolationist group. Bernard Darcy, New York representative of Coughlin’s Social Justice, and other Coughlinites were listed on the program. Prior to the meeting Marshall issued a statement denying that the committee was anti-democratic and anti-Semitic, declaring the charges were part of a “desperate smear campaign aimed to deceive and confuse the American public.”

According to the New York World Telegram, Armstrong told a meeting of the governing committee of the Keep America Out of War Congress last week that he was “fed up” with the Marshall committee, that he had become convinced the was reactionary and anti-Semitic and that no peace organization could be effective on such a basis. Armstrong was quoted as saying he had been invited to dinner by Merwin K. Hart, president of the New York State Economic Council, on behalf of the No Foreign War Committee, and that he had never heard such anti-democratic and anti-Semitic talk in his life as he heard that night.