19 1 7^] A loosing Fight 



ins 



Arrott secured the Presbyterian Church, and Pro- 

 fessor Evans Clark of the Department of Economics Evar^ 

 presided at the meeting. Many of those present were ciark 

 not wholly in sympathy with what I had to say. 

 They were, nevertheless, scrupulously polite — news- 

 papers to the contrary notwithstanding — only two 

 or three carefully modulated whistles indicating dis- 

 sent at one time. 



When I had finished, the audience passed a vote of 

 censure on the authorities for refusing to allow stu- 

 dents to hold a peace program under a university 

 roof; as nearly as I could count, 300 voted in the 

 affirmative and 25 in the negative. Afterward, in 

 special conference, a smaller number organized a 

 local branch of the Union against Militarism. All 

 these young men, I was told, belonged to the group 

 which had recently protested against the expensive 

 and aristocratic "honor society" system of the insti- 

 tution.i 



I next went to Boston, expecting to speak at a 

 public meeting of the Union against Militarism at 

 Harvard on the evening of the 27th. But being unable 

 to secure a suitable hall for that particular date, the 

 society asked for the following, which, however, I 

 could not give, as my time w^as already pledged. 



So far as I know, university officials put no obstacle Garrison 

 in the way, yet the committee in charge suffered an y^fj'/^^ 

 outrageous attack in quite Prussian fashion at the 

 hands of other students when they gathered in the 

 room of Robert Garrison (grandson of the great 



1 Referring to this, a member of the faculty once spoke of it as "a visible 

 sign of the earthquake rift which splits Princeton." 



"Pacifists make the best fighters," says a French writer. At any rate I later 

 heard of Arrott, a fellow of both nerve and refinement, as "somewhere m 

 France." 



n 723 3 



