As you sit there, growing prouder, With your skillful tongue awag, As your piping voice grows louder, Preaching Socialistic gag— Stop a moment, let us warn you, Nature’s freak, That we loathe you and we scorn you, Bolshevik! Harold Laski was scheduled to give a lecture at Yale, and when he got there he found this copy of the “Lampoon” on sale all over town, together with a reprint of an editorial in the “Transcript” denouncing him. He was young, and rather sensitive, and naturally it occurred to him that he was wasting his talents upon Harvard. He would be allowed to stay there, he told a friend of mine, but he would never be promoted, he would have no career. On the other hand, the University of London offered him a full professorship at a higher salary, in a part of the world where men may think what they please about the capitalist state. Laski resigned; and so cleverly the job had been managed—he had quit of his own free will, and the great university could go on boasting that its professors are not forced out because of their opinions! As a commentary on this story, I am sure you will be interested in an extract from a letter from Laski, dated August 16, 1922: The results of the American atmosphere are quite clear. 1. Many men deliberately adopt reactionary views to secure promotion. 2. Many more never express opinions lest the penalty be exacted. 3. Those who do are penalized when the chance of promotion comes. I am very much impressed by the contrast between the general freedom of the English academic atmosphere and the illiberalism of America. Three of my colleagues at the London School of Economics are labor candidates; business men predominate on the governing body; but interference is never dreamed of. At Oxford and Cambridge the widest range of view prevails. But alumni do not protest, and if they do, they are told to mind their own business. In America, one always feels hampered by the sense of a control outside; in England you never feel that it is necessary to watch your tongue. No ox treads upon it. CHAPTER XIX RAKING THE DUST-HEAPS