RED, BLACK, AND BLUE

Ford Hall Forum, that Sunday evening haven of Boston free speech and Harvard liberals, is threatened with closing. The Baptist Social Union, its main support, is reported to have voted against its continuance. Financial reasons are advanced for the move; but David K. Niles, associate director of the Forum, sees behind this action the shadow of the Blue Menace, which for a decade has been growing more and more potent in this state. Born of the anti-Red agitation immediately after the war, this undemocratic reaction found agents for its platform in a few super-patriotic organizations, and a means to stifle free speech in the black list.

Just at present few can see any great danger of a Red invasion, and the overthrow of government by radicals of extreme doctrines. Much more urgent a matter is the policy of the opposite party, which, under the guise of protecting defenceless America from pernicious Reds, wields a powerful weapon of reaction. The same group of Bolshevik-bailers that backs the closing of Ford Hall Forum lists such names as Dean Pound, Professor Bliss Perry, and the presidents of Smith and Mt. Holyoke as dangerous, and closes to them lecture platforms in towns and clubs where the black list is law. Dungeons and the rack are no longer good form; a much more subtle toxin does its work among the credulous of this day. The old sport of hushing up any one possibly opposed to the powers that be is revived; its victims are dragged along in a net of prejudice, without even the semblance of a just trial.