Faculty Group Oppose HR 1776 in Petition to Congress; Conant to Favor Bill in Senate Committee Testimony

"This is more our war than probably any other war that we have fought since 1776," Edgar Ansell Mowrer, noted war correspondent, declared last night before a capacity audience in Emerson D. The meeting was sponsored by the Student Defense League.

At the same time the SDL circulated a petition asking Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Bill as amended by the House Foreign Affairs Committee "to insure Britain's defeat of Hitler."

Mowrer asserted that there was nothing new in the idea that the Nazis aim at world domination. He added that this aim alone would provide the reason for Germany's allying with two nations whom she despises-Japan and Italy.

"Generally speaking, the Germans are a very sad people," he said. "The only ones who enjoy the Nazi rule are the sixteen-year-olds who honestly like to march all the time." The Germans are stunned by the fact that America has survived the depression yet retained its fundamental liberties, he said, and they are beginning to lose faith in their form of government.

False Argument

Those who argue that, if Germany cannot cross 22 miles of the English Channel she cannot cross the 3000 miles of the Atlantic, must remember that we cannot keep the 3000 miles filled with battleships, as is possible in the Channel, he declared.

A negotiated peace would be almost as bad for this country as a British defeat, he said. It would mean at the most a 20-month truce, during which Germany could rebuild her offensive force in preparation for attack against the Western Hemisphere.

"Lindbergh assumes that the German soldiers are supermen with no nerves, and that therefore Britain can never invade the continent," Mowrer stated. "But the Germans are really a hysterical race, and as in the last war they would probably give up if their offensive were successfully stopped.

"This will really become a war of nerves if Britain can hold out until our aid is effective," he concluded. "And the chances are that in such a war free peoples can last out longer than enslaved ones."

The text of the SDL petition, which was signed by most of the audience, read: "To avoid the costly mistakes of the democracies in the past when help came always too late and too little, we, the undersigned, most urgently request the United States Congress to pass as soon as possible the Lend-Lease Bill, as amended by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to insure Britain's defeat of Hitler."