Thomas-For-President Club Telegraphs for Statement From Authorities on Jailing of Gitlow-Foul Play is Suspected

Aroused by the refusal of the local authorities to issue any definite information in regard to Benjamin Gitlow, Worker's (Communist) Party candidate for vice-president, who has not been heard from for over a week, the officers of the Harvard Thomas-for-President Club last night sent the following telegram:

"Chief of Police

Nogales, Arizona

The Harvard Thomas-for-President Club heartily deplores and condemns the prevalent un-American tendency to brand all new doctrines seditions and to brand as traitors all leaders of new thought. Among institutions which existed for many years were chattel slavery, feudalism, and Tsarist regime in Russia, among the advocates of new political systems have been Jesus Christ, Washington and Lincoln. His fellow citizens demand to know how Benjamin Gitlow has merited jail, and why he has been held incommunicando.

All that is definitely known thus far is that Gitlow, on a campaign tour of the West was scheduled to speak at Phoenix, Arizona, but that when his train arived there bands of Klansmen and members of the American Legion prevented his descending, and that when he was due to speak at Tuscon he could not be found.

Communists charge that he was forcibly removed at Phoenix, and after a severe beating, taken to the Phoenix jail. When their posses were about to locate him, he was transferred to Nogales on the border. A wire from the Chief of Police of Nogales to Federal Officers in Washington. D. C., States that Gitlow is being held, but names no charge against him.

These circumstances have led the Harvard Chapter of the Junior League of the American Civil Liberties Union to send the following wire:

"Chief of Police,

Nogales, Ariz,

The Harvard Chapter of the Junior League of the American Civil Liberties Union accuses you of being disloyal to the ideals and principles upon which our nation was founded. We have sufficient confidence in American institutions to believe that they can stand the test of open criticism. We demand that our fellow-citizen Benjamin Gitlow be protected in the proper exercise of his legitimate rights of free speech and assemblage, and we further demand that the reason for his arrest be made known at once."

World has been received that the Harvard Liberal Club also contemplates taking some action in the matter.