1917] A Losing Fight 



Arrott secured the Presbyterian Church, and Pro- 

 fessor Evans Clark of the Department of Economics Evans 

 presided at the meeting. Many of those present were Clark 

 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. 1 



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 was already pledged. 



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

 in the way, yet the committee in charge suffered an 

 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 in 

 France." 



c 723 n 



