Mather, Barnes Debate Anti-Red Bills Tonight

Mounting furor over anti-Communist education legislation up for hearings at the State House Monday will center in New Lecture Hall tonight at 7:50 o'clock when Kirtley F. Mather, professor of Geology and chairman of the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union, argues the merits of H220 with its author, Commonwealth Attorney General Clarence A. Barnes.

Mather's statement of the case against the Barnes Bill precedes by two days the official University opposition testimony which President Conant will deliver at 2:30 o'clock on Monday afternoon.

Although many educators and men of affairs are reported to disapprove of the bill the actual list of those who will appear personally and those others whose names will be cited before the Committee on Education remains a closely guarded secret.

Ketchum Speaks

In Boston last night Phillips Ketchum '06, partner in the law firm of Herrick, Smith, Donald, Farley, and Ketchum, made one early declaration that under the broadly-defined provisions of the bill, which would render criminal the employment of subversives in educational institutions, "those supporting the United Nations, labor unions, and efforts to curtail racial discrimination" would all be suspect.

The Right Reverend Episcopal Bishop Norman B. Nash stated curtly: "I am opposed to it."

Speaking for the Civil Liberties Union, Mrs. Kenneth B. Murdock said that the organization feared the sneak-through passage of the other three concurrently pending bills "quite as insidious" as the Barnes legislation itself and would consequently concentrate efforts in rounding up opposition speakers Monday upon morning hearings concerning H1597, the "Little Dies" bill.

Bender Opposed

The University stood solidly hostile. Dean bender emphasized that "the real purpose seems to be to intimidate people. If the Barnes Bill existed, it couldn't be enforced, but it could very well make teachers timid, cautions, and conformist when what we need today is a constantly vigorous independent outlook."

In the absence of President William Rusher 3L, secretary Albert J. Dauray, Jr. '49 of the Young Republican Club asserted that "the Barnes Bill as it now stands," is made unworkable by its ambiguous language and broadside approach."

Frederic D. Houghteling '50, Liberal Union president, pointed to the "typically Communist tactics" which the proponents of the bill propose to use.