All this Colonel Barrows had every opportunity to see, and in it he saw “not thing” that he disapproved; so you see that our “dean of political science” is no fragile mollycoddle, no bespectacled professor living a closet life, but a real, red-blooded, two-fisted man of action. Coming back to California, fresh from “Semenoff’s slaughter houses,” Colonel Barrows proceeded to advocate the setting up similar establishments on the campus of his university. Speaking before a convention of the State High School Association, he advocated that the Bolsheviki should be stood against the wall and shot. “There is only one way to deal with Bolshevism—fight it. Force is the only way. The time has come to treat them with militarism; I believe in killing the Bolsheviki.” Then Captain Schuyler, one of the intelligence officers whom Barrows brought back with him, spoke his sentiments: “If a man stood before me and declared himself a Bolshevist, I would shoot him on the spot, like a mad dog.” Naturally, that made considerable fuss in Berkeley; for the city had a Socialist mayor and school board only a couple of years previously, and the chambers of commerce and the professional patriots were doing their best to establish the term “Bolsheviki” as including, not merely all Socialists, but everybody who believed in the initiative and referendum, or in government ownership of railroads. So the Socialists of Berkeley challenged Barrows to a debate. He accepted, and the Socialists tried first to get the university hall, and then the high school auditorium; but the president of the Berkeley board of education—a dentist, described to me by another school board member as rarely attending a session without the smell of liquor on his breath—opposed the use of the building, and advocated that all Socialists should be “driven into the bay.” Finally, however, the use of the auditorium was obtained; it would only seat twelve hundred people, whereas between eight and ten thousand came. This was July 30, 1919, at the time when “Bolsheviki” by thousands were being clubbed over the heads and thrown into jail all over the United States. The mayor and the chief of police of Berkeley sat on the platform, and two auto loads of secret service men attended; an effort was made to start a riot and raid the Socialists, a scheme which was averted by the quickness of Mrs. Elvina Beals, who presided at the meeting. Mrs. Beals was for many years a Socialist member of the school board, and the people of Berkeley know her. In the course of the debate, Dean Barrows advocated that the American government should conquer Siberia and Russia for Kolchak, and he asked whether the Socialists of Berkeley would support a strike to prevent the shipment of ammunition to Siberia. They answered with a roar that they would; and so Dean Barrows retired, and did no more debating with these Berkeley “Bolsheviki.” CHAPTER XXX THE MOB OF LITTLE HATERS