Twenty thousand persons attended a picnic sponsored by the Germania Broadcast yesterday in the picnic grove at Riverview park and heard Werner Schroeder, national Republican committeeman for Illinois, and William Klein, Broadcast chairman, praise America as the land of freedom.
Schroeder said that the forefathers of most of those present had come here to be free from "monarchy or dictatorships" and that they had found that freedom. Schroeder's speech was given as part of the ceremonies honoring 150 former German citizens who recently became Americans.
Klein, in his talk, said:
"It is very hard for a broadminded person to remain neutral these days. German-Americans are between two fires -- those fanatics who think that anyone who speaks German is a Nazi, on the one hand, and on the other a certain organization I don't want to mention, which is working against us."
There were no flags but the American Flag.