College Free Speech.

To the Editor of the Boston Herald:

Your editorial in today's issue on "Professors and Patriotism" is of deep interest to all Democrats. You deprecate the much "shouting" of the "blind partisans" among our college faculties. So far, so good. Then in some curious manner you imply that only arrant pro-German fanatics have so spoken! Last evening Professor Ellery C. Stowell of Columbia University, speaking at the Labor Temple, New York City, said in his address: "The opinion of the people in this country as to the course of its rulers makes itself felt, and in the present instance I hope and believe that it is going to make itself felt in favor of war." Is this the sort of "political doctrine" which Columbia is about to "investigate," or does it confine its investigations purely to anti-war speeches? A short while ago Count Tolstoi, the son of the world famous author, was prevented by President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia from delivering a speech in the precincts of that university which the censor at Moscow had seen fit to pass as harmless, even for Russia! Is that doctrine of of- fering public insult to a leading citizen of one of our possible allies to be left uninvestigated? It is not so long ago that the Harvard authorities prevented the widow of Mr. Sheehy Skeffington from speaking in the college building, though it allowed men like Scott Nearing to use the same hall but a year before--because she was likely to make remarks about the treatment of her dead husband in the course of her speech that would be derogatory to another of our possible future allies. Well known citizens and respected professors such as Ralph Barton Perry and Albert Bushnell Hart have given quite free rein to their own opinions, though they were definitely pro-ally--and it is right that they should. Do you suggest that they should be "investigated" or silenced? I trust not. If democracy means anything it means a tolerant hearing even for fanatics, and most certainly for those who are endeavoring to be neither pro-German nor pro-ally in these awful times, but simply American. . . . .  W. HARRIS CROOK.