HUNDREDS PROTEST SHUTTING OFF OF MAIER PEACE TALK

Lutheran Leader Gets Many Telegrams After Action of Canadian Radio Station.

Dr. Walter A. Maier of Concordia Seminary, known from coast to coast for his radio broadcasts on the Lutheran Hour each Sunday afternoon, today was receiving hundreds of telegrams from listeners protesting the action of radio station CKLW of Windsor, Ontario, in cutting Dr. Maier off the air yesterday as he made a Christmas plea for peace.

Dr. Maier, who is professor of Semitic languages at Concordia Seminary and who began his eighth year of broadcasting on the Lutheran Hour last October 27, told the Star-Times he was cut off by the Canadian station shortly after he had told his listeners that his broadcasts, which originate in St. Louis, would be censored in event the United States entered the war.

"This may be the last Christmas season in which I am permitted to speak to you. Dr. Maier said, "for if a state of emergency is declared and the radio put under government censorship, I have no delusions about the fact that the religious programs permitted to continue will be the messages of modern unbelief which even now, through the support of American millionaires and discriminating church federations, have secured all but a stranglehold on religious broadcasts."

Shortly after that statement. Dr. Maier said, he was cut off. The program went on the air at 12:30 p. m., St. Louis time, and Dr. Maier started speaking at 12:34. He was cut off by CKLW at 12:41, seven minutes later.

Canadians Protest

Dr. Maier said the first he learned of the action of station CKLW was when he began receiving telegrams from listeners in the Windsor and Detroit areas. Later. Detroit and I Cleveland newspapers verified the action. The address, according to an International News Service dispatch, was ordered cut off the air by J. E. Campeau, director of CKLW. the Windsor outlet of the Mutual Broadcasting System, which carries the Lutheran Hour.

"This," Dr. Maier said, "is an exhibition of fatal inconsistency and discrimination, when men who plead to hurl this country into war" get free use of the radio while we who pay full station rates to preach peace are cut off the air."

Campeau, according to the I. N. S. dispatch, said strict rules laid down by the Canadian Censorship Board caused his station to cut off Dr. Maier's talk.

"It was the feeling of the management that the statements being made warranted our action," Campeau was quoted as saying. "We are held responsible by the Canadian Censorship Board for what goes out over the air from this station and our orders are that anything doubtful be cut off, especially when no script is submitted in advance."

Heard Over 247 Stations.

The Lutheran Hour, heard in St. Louis over Stations KWK and KFUO, is carried directly by 133 stations from the Concordia Seminary 3tudios of KFUO, while 114 other stations present the Lutheran Hour by electrical transcription. Dr. Maier said he did not know what action he will take but he is considering a protest to the Mutual Broadcasting System.

"I don't want it to happen again," he said. The theme of Dr. Maler's talk yesterday, and of other talks this year, was "Peace Through the Church."

"It was a 100 per cent American, Christian talk," Dr. Maier said, "and there was nothing objectionable in It in any way."

In his talk, Dr. Maier declared: "The United States is headed for war, and the consequences, even after war will be terrifying."

He indicted certain church leaders and prominent educators, all too old themselves to fight, as "fear fomenters," "war mongers," "blood traders" and "Pied Pipers of propaganda." He asked his hearers to make Christmas a "day of Christ-centered prayer for' peace."

"Of all the misinformed and destructive blind leaders of the blind," Dr. Maier said, "none are so sightless and cause as much confusion and chaos as the preachers who. without knowing the facts of history, tell their congregations we must enter this war for Christ and Christianity."

Dr. Maier made only one brief reference to England in his talk.

"Over in England." he said, "they are beginning to measure the cost of the war in terms of religious loss."

Every department in the Church of England, he said, the number of baptisms, confirmations, ordinations has dropped drastically.

Although Christians reject the principles and practices of Fascism. Naziism and Communism," Dr. Maier continued, "we can best build for democracy and Christianity by constructive peace."

"Government leaders," he asserted, "are bemoaning the fact that our defense program has been tragically slowed down. The spiritual defense program of many churches, however, has not even started. At a time when men nerd the comfort and the soul-peace that come only through Christ, many modernist churches will fail to rise to the emergency and meet the despairing cry of souls filled with fear and uncertainty."