New York Times
POLICE AT PACIFIST MEETING
———
Peace Conference Will Also Be Watched by Federal Agents.
———
Police officials and the Federal authorities will have representatives at Madison Square Garden today and tomorrow while the members of the First American Conference for Democracy and Terms of Peace, a pacifist organization, are holding their meetings to consider war problems. The publicity representative of the conference announced yesterday that the pacifists had no intention of placing any obstacles in the way of the registration under the army draft law, but the authorities are determined to see for themselves.
The headquarters of the conference was recently moved from the Holland House to 298 Fifth Avenue, was visited yesterday by many prominent Socialists and pacifists who will attend the meetings at Madison Square Garden.
"Our purpose in holding these meetings is to demand that President Wilson make a definite statement of the country’s war aims," said one of the leaders. "The United States having entered the war because of German submarine atrocities, we want to know if we will withdraw from the war if these atrocities cease. We want to know what we are fighting for. We believe that there should be a definit statement along the lines made by the new Russian democracy."
The conference will hold six sessions, and will listen to addresses by Morris Hillquit, one of the Socialist delegates to Stockholm, who was denied a passport; Dr. Judah L. Magnes, Job Harriman of Los Angeles, Jenkins Lloyd Jones of Chicago and others. Victor L. Berger of Milwaukee, former Socialist Congressman, is expected to attend one or more of the sessions.
Although Samuel Gompers refused to participate in the conference on the ground that de did not desire to associate himself with "conscious or unconscious agents of the Kaiser," it was announced yesterday that the meetings will be attended by these labor leaders: James H. Maurer, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, who is also a Socialist; A. J. Boulton of the Central Federated Union of Brooklyn, James A. Bagley of the Pressman’s Union; Rose Schneiderman of the Women’s Trade Union League, John C. Kennedy of Chicago, Edward J. Cassidy of the Central Federated Union of New York City and others.
