412 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1191 



Dewey has recently resigned as a protest 

 against the general situation. 



The resolution retiring me was referred to 

 the committee, which unanimously recom- 

 mended that no action be taken. They, how- 

 ever, asked me for an apology for my ironical 

 remark about the president, and I signed the 

 statement which Professor Seligman wrote, on 

 the assurance that this would be of great serv- 

 ice to the committee in maintaining the rights 

 of the faculty and of freedom of speech, and 

 on the promise that it would be shown to no 

 one except the committee on inquisition of the 

 trustees, and only to them if necessary. 

 When the apology was sent out by Professor 

 Seligman to officers of the university and 

 printed in the newspapers I wrote a letter to 

 members of the Faculty Club telling how it 

 had been obtained. I thought I owed this to 

 them, as many had approved of my remark 

 about the president, one professor, for example, 

 having written : " Let me first of all thank you 

 for saying so well some of the things that I 

 and many others dare not say for fear our 

 families would be left without support if we 

 did say them." 



Professor Seligman then wrote a letter to 

 me, copies of which he sent out by the hun- 

 dred, stating that I did not " respect the ordi- 

 nary decencies of intercourse among gentle- 

 men ' ' and that my " usefulness in the univer- 

 sity has come to an end." As I ujiderstand it, 

 Professor Seligman claims that he only broke 

 the promise of a gentleman and I had no right 

 to reveal the fact. I hold that it was the prom- 

 ise of the acting dean of the graduate facul- 

 ties and of the chairman of the committee of 

 nine of the council, made officially in the 

 dean's office, and that secret diplomacy should 

 have no place in a university. 



Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of 

 this petty squabble, seven of the nine mem- 

 bers of the Butler-Seligman committee on 

 June 18 recommended that I be retired from 

 active service with the pension due me. The 

 trustees, however, chose to dismiss me for 

 maintaining academic freedom in the classical 

 sense, not for resisting academic slavery as it 

 exists at Columbia. 



When they dismissed me on October 1, with- 

 out a hearing, without payment for the year 

 and without the pension due me, it was on the 

 sole ground that I had on August 23 addressed 

 a letter to members of the Congress asking 

 them to support a measure then before the 

 Senate and the House to prohibit sending con- 

 scripts " to fight in Europe against their will." 

 There is no law requiring or permitting the 

 President to send " conscientious objectors " to 

 fight in Europe. To do this, according to an 

 opinion prepared by the Attorney General of 

 the United States for the President in 1912, 

 would be unconstitutional. It is also against 

 the uniform policy of the nation. It would 

 provide a less efficient army and might cause 

 disorder at home. The British government 

 does not require " conscientious objectors " to 

 fight, and does not force conscription on Ire- 

 land. I only exercised the constitutional right 

 and fulfilled the duty of a citizen in petition- 

 ing the government to enact legislation which 

 I believe to be in the interest of the nation. 

 By a curious irony the committee of the trus- 

 tees appointed to guard the Constitution rec- 

 ommended my dismissal for using the method 

 which the Constitution states shall not be 

 abridged in a letter written to members of the 

 Congress asking them to respect the Constitu- 

 tion. 



If the president and the trustees could have 

 found in anything else that I have said or done 

 anything that by any possible perversion 

 could have been made to appear unpatriotic 

 they would have been only too glad to have ad- 

 duced it. As it is, they have hid behind the 

 flag to assassinate, relying on the prejudice 

 and blind patriotism of war. They might have 

 retired me for insubordination, and there 

 would have been no public protest; but they 

 apparently wanted to injure me and discredit 

 my eSorts for university reform. This they 

 may have been able to do, but only by causing 

 at the same time far greater injury to the uni- 

 versity. 



I favor peace on the Russian terms, prac- 

 tically adopted by the President in his reply 

 to the Pope. But both before and since our 

 entry into the war I have done everything in 



