Peace Rally Draws 1200 Into Boston

About 1200 people gathered on Boston Common Saturday afternoon to protest the arms race and urge immediate United States initiatives for disarmament. Dick Bollens, New England co-ordinator of the sponsoring Turn Toward Peace Council, claimed that the mass rally was "twice as large as any previous demonstration held in Boston," and attributed its size to "a growing desire for peace among the American people."

Many of those present at the Parkman Bandstand rally were not, however, sympathetic to Turn Toward Peace. A large group of "casual hecklers" gathered in the back of the Bandstand area, and about ten extreme anti-Communists paraded in front of the speakers' podium shouting slogans and disrupting the proceedings at several points.

Policemen assigned to the rally generally refused to interfere with the picketers because "the protest did not become boisterous and no one was molested." Violence flared only once during the program, when someone in the Turn Toward Peace audience ripped a sign carried by a Polish Freedom Fighter. Police quickly quashed the resulting fight.

H. Stuart Hughes, professor of History and independent candidate for the United States Senate, joined two Hiroshima Pilgrims and several leaders of local peace groups in a two-hour speaking program.

The Pilgrims, both refugees from the atomic attack on Hiroshima in 1945, carried a large banner reading: "Patients in bomb hospitals send their prayers."

To shouts of "Remember Pearl Harbor" from hecklers, one of the Hiroshima survivors told how his parents had been killed in the atomic attack and the responsibility for raising him had fallen on a destitute grandmother. The pilgrims, who are currently on a world tour, read a telegram of "good wishes" from President Kennedy to the people of Hiroshima.

Rallies Throughout Nation

The Turn Toward Peace movement, coordinated with similar Easter weekend demonstrations throughout the country, began early Saturday morning, as about 200 people started a march from Newton to Boston. The group reached the Cambridge Common for lunch at noontime.

A group from Harvard's Tocsin joined the march in Cambridge, but the delegation was not as large as expected. Tocsin did not officially endorse the project, and despite Saturday's fine weather, many peace-enthusiasts at the College decided not to attend the rally.

At 1 p.m. the marchers left Cambridge and started down Massachusetts Ave. to Boston. The large delegations expected to join the march at Commonwealth Ave. failed to materialize, and the full strength of the demonstration as it reached the the Common was only about 550.