Anti War Protests
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Anti-War Protest, 1934
The anti-war mass meeting and torchlight parade of the Liberal Club in the yard last night which Washington Veterans of the Foreign Wars threatened to break up, ended in a riot-of laughter. Less than 150 students stood about laughing and joking behind Lisner Hall while three scheduled speakers of the Liberal Club and one member of the audience attempted to speak.
Only the chairman of the program, Robert Shosteck, seemed prepared to talk. Other speakers, Kenneth Meiklejohn, Harvey Thirloway, president, and Roger L. Cerioni, a member of the audience, made disjointed statements about “bearing arms,” “defending the American flag,” “aggressive war,” “Melon Millions,” and “armaments.” Despite fears of District militaristic organizations that the University was expressing un-American “spirit” by allowing the rally, students took the matter as a huge joke.
There were no torchlights because the fire department would not allow them; there were no veterans of foreign wars to break up the meeting because President Marvin had previously “pacified” their delegation over the telephone. One half dozen policemen were on hand, but they had a big laugh, too. The speakers were constantly interrupted by un-sympathetic students who shouted, “Hurrah for Huey Long,” “Hurray for Hitler”… Another heckler shouted, “What would you do if you had ten million dollars?” And the speaker promptly answered, “My friend, I would put it in the anti-war movement.” The crowd alternately cheered and booed.
Late in the afternoon President Marvin, in answer to protests by Veterans of Foreign Wars, D.A.R., and the Military Order of the World War, on the holding of peace meeting on the campus, issued a formal statement in which he declared, “The function of the university is to search for truth, this means freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and, incidentally so far as the University is concerned, freedom of the press, for it is only in the testing between extremes of viewpoints that the truth may be found.”
President Marvin declared that the University would take no action in attempting to stop the meeting, and when asked by militaristic groups, he said, “the University was not giving official sanction to efforts of the group by that action nor does the University give sanction to any set of opinions on any subject.” In an open letter to President Marvin, James E. Van Zandt of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, earlier in the day declared that the holding of an anti-war meeting is, “plainly un-American and absolutely devoid of common sense and patriotic decency. It is inconceivable for me as a commander-in-chief of America’s largest group of overseas fighting men to think that a meeting of the nature announced in the press would be tolerated in American institutions. I sincerely hope will not permit the continued activities of this un-American element of George Washington University,” Mr. Van Zandt said.
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Author or Source: Hatchet, November 13, 1934
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist
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