PATERNALISM--IN PRACTISE

The cause of free speech and especially free speech in the schools has met with a resounding defense in the case of the Liberal Club of West Chester State Normal School of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Urged on by accusations from the local American Legion, the principal of the college undertook to discharge two professors who had joined in the Club's discussion of the Coolidge policy regarding Nicaurauga, also employing his authority to forbid further meetings of the organization.

Such examples of rigid domination of conservatives over constructive liberals have been increasingly frequent of late in American educational institutions. The question has ceased to be one concerning the justice of conflicting views; the very principles of liberalism are at stake. Education is presumably an effort to cultivate the rational powers of youth and yet in these instances such faculties have been forced to choose between the option of conforming to the prevailing mode of thought, or of ceasing to function.

The absolutely unanimous condemnation of the West Chester head's action and attitude which the press has offered is a hopeful indication. It is possible that the right of free speech may have to be ingrafted into the educational system by external sources. Public opinion is turning and with it must turn the iron schoolmasters. Even the most opiniated authorities may credit some weight to the statement of such men as Representative Hamilton Fish Jr. of New York who says, regarding the affair that he ". . deplores such attacks, whether by the American Legion or any other patriotic organization, which in the name of Americanism deprives American citizens from exercising their constitutional rights to express their views on the foreign policies of the United States and particularly to discuss such matters publicly in high schools or universities."