811.51/2624
The National Chairman, Friends of Peace (John Brisben Walker), to the Secretary of State
Sir: The newspapers today report Pierpont Morgan and other Americans as in treaty with the English Government through Baron. Reading, its Lord Chief Justice, and Basil P. Blackett, C. B., Special Treasury Agent of the English Government to use one thousand millions of American money in aiding the cause of the allies.
These millions are badly needed in America for financing the agricultural interests, especially that of cotton, for the railways, for the building of good roads, et cetera. Jas. J. Hill says that twice that sum is needed to put American Railways in proper condition.
The money which Mr. Morgan proposes to lend can only be obtained by making use of the United States Treasury Reserve, putting commercial paper upon the Government, and using the funds thus relieved; or else by deceiving the small investor into accepting a war loan which may yet fall to 48 cents on the dollar, as did our American war securities, under English manipulation, during the, war of the rebellion.
May I ask you to telegraph this organization whether we have, or have not, laws on the statute books which, as construed by you, would prevent this flagrant breach of neutrality, in thus giving aid to the financially distressed allies, while committing a positive injustice against the American people?
[Page 148]We beg at the same time to lay before you the platform adopted at Chicago, on September 6th, by the greatest convention ever brought together in behalf of a moral ideal—voted unanimously by more than two thousand delegates representing societies having a membership of more than ten millions of American citizens.
This convention, composed of a high class of American citizens, was addressed by your great predecessor in the office of the Secretary of State, and cheered allusions by him to President Wilson.
Its proceedings have [been] the object of such suppressions, and so much misrepresentation and vilification by that portion of the American press which is behind the great interests manufacturing armaments and munitions, that its platform has not been published anywhere in the East, so far as I have seen. I therefore enclose a copy,20 asking your special attention to the marked paragraphs.
Yours sincerely,
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