AEMI

60 AEMI JOURNAL 2015
morale. Most of the children may never
return to their native land and all of
them will be away long enough to be
nationalized by the countries to which
they have been sent. Thus they will no
longer be Basques and the Basque race
will eventually disappear off the face
of earth as such. Such development is
being hotly protested specially in this
country. This is too far to bring the
children anyhow and unless they are
managed with unusual care and skill are
bound to suffer much. If they are to be
used for propaganda or other ulterior
purposes the plan is cold blooded and
cruel. This would not detent Communists,
however, who consider no sacrifice
too great to advance their cause. 30
One of the most prominent opponents
to bringing Basque children to
New York was Cardinal William H.
O’Connell (1859-1944) of Boston.
And O’Connell soon gained the support
of the Adams, Boston, Cambridge,
Falmouth, McMahon, Newton, Springfield,
Waltham and Worcester Councils
of the Knights of Columbus (CKC).
Numerous CKC councils in Massachusetts
and Maine sent telegrams to both
the State Department and the House of
Representatives opposing the supposed
communist conspiracy. Other Catholic
organizations in O’Connell’s diocese
joined the campaign, such as the
Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, the
League of Catholic Women, the Congress
of Catholic Women, the Women’s
Philomatheia Club, the Ladies Catholic
Benevolent Association of the State of
Illinois and the Catholic Alumni Sodality
of Boston. They all opposed the project
as “Red propaganda.”
Francis P. Frazier, John Z. Norton
and John J. Harrington, grand knights,
wrote to U.S. Representative Robert L.
Luce on May 25:
Five hundred Knights of Columbus of
Waltham and their families, after special
meeting last evening, protest the
importation through waiving of immigration
laws by State Department of
two thousand Basque children violently
aliened from parents and potential public
charges of this country. 31
Francis P. Frazier, on behalf of the Newton
CKC, called the project a ‘brutal
attempt to gain partisan publicity at
the expense of innocent children;’ 32 the
Falmouth CKC considered it to be a
‘monstrous proposal’ 33 ; Grand Knight
J. P. McAndrews of Adams protested
against that ‘monstrous undertaking,
noting that it was ‘just another piece
of Communistic propaganda instituted
by the followers of the Loyalist group in
Spain who are seeking sympathetic support
in United States’ 34 ; Joseph Z. Ouellette,
for the Main State CKC, expressed
that the children could ‘easily become
tools of propaganda in favor of the
Communist Socialist regime;’ 35 Victor J.
Lo Pinto called it an ‘unwarranted mass
kidnapping.’ 36 Finally, John J. Spillane,
state secretary of the Knights of Columbus,
also expressed his disapproval on
behalf of the Massachusetts State CKC
to Franklin D. Roosevelt. 37 In all these
cases, the answer by the U.S. State Department
was the same: ‘the department
has taken no action in regard to these
cases, since the responsibility for passing
upon the temporary visitor status
of each individual case rests upon the