The world at large regarded this sort of supervision as an insufferable survival of the Dark Ages and we of the great republic of the west saved copies of the American comic papers, duly “caviared,” to show the folks at home what backward barbarians those far famed Russians actually were. Then came the great Russian revolution. For the last seventy-five years the Russian revolutionist had howled that he was a poor, persecuted creature who enjoyed no “liberty” at all and as evidence thereof he had pointed to the strict supervision of all journals devoted to the cause of socialism. But in the year 1918, the under-dog turned upper-dog. And what happened? Did the victorious friends of freedom abolish censorship of the press? By no means. They padlocked all papers and magazines which did not comment favorably upon the acts of the new masters, they sent many unfortunate editors to Siberia or Archangel (not much to choose) and in general showed themselves a hundred times more intolerant than the much maligned ministers and police sergeants of the Little White Father. It happens that I was brought up in a fairly liberal community, which heartily believed in the motto of Milton that the “liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to our own conscience, is the highest form of liberty.” “Came the war,” as the movies have it, and I was to see the day when the Sermon on the Mount was declared to be a dangerous pro-German document which must not be allowed to circulate freely among a hundred million sovereign citizens and the publication of which would expose the editors and the printers to fines and imprisonment. In view of all this it would really seem much wiser to drop the further study of history and to take up short story writing or real estate. But this would be a confession of defeat. And so I shall stick to my job, trying to remember that in a well regulated state, every decent citizen is supposed to have the right to say and think and utter whatever he feels to be true, provided he does not interfere with the happiness and comfort of his neighbors, does not act against the good manners of polite society or break one of the rules of the local police. This places me, of course, on record as an enemy of all official censorship. As far as I can see, the police ought to watch out for certain magazines and papers which are being printed for the purpose of turning pornography into private gain. But for the rest, I would let every one print whatever he liked. I say this not as an idealist or a reformer, but as a practical person who hates wasted efforts, and is familiar with the history of the last five hundred years. That period shows clearly that violent methods of suppression of the printed or spoken word have never yet done the slightest good.