Intellectual Liberty Imperilled

Abstract

A NOTHER list of academic proscriptions is posted in Germany. /' The list for one recent day included the urbane and cosmojL JL politan Moritz Bonn, well known in America as one of the most interesting of exchange professors} Emil Lederer, a liberal scholar of serene purity of purpose and clarity of thought} Kantorowitz, one of the most distinguished of living historians} Keilsen, an authority on jurisprudence who would adorn any age. Eight more, every one a scholar of note, were included in that list. They are liberals, or they have socialistic leanings, or they are internationalists, or most damaging of all they are Jews. And hundreds of other professors, against whom one or another of these heinous charges may be brought, are looking forward to expulsion from the chairs they have honored and to a precarious and poverty-stricken future. At least, it may be said, they can continue to write books. Freedom of oral instruction is gone; but the most effective means of instruction is after all the book, with the author's philosophy weightily set forth, his facts marshalled in unassailable array. Alas, freedom to write is dependent on freedom to publish, and this freedom too has perished out of Germany. The German scholar may go into exile and write what he pleases, but there has never been sufficient market for his books abroad to justify their publication. So far as the present outlook goes, the free German scholar is done for. Let us entertain no illusions about the superiority of mind to circumstance. Wer tot ist y der ist tot. Such proscription of scholars, unfortunately, is no new and strange phenomenon in our time. The best of the Italian scholars are wandering around the world today, eking out a living as best they can. Russia, too, had distinguished scholars under the old regime whose opinions failed to square with the official doctrine. They are in exile, living in attics on book reviewing or private tutoring, or engaged in some manual occupation which affords scanty bread. There were