Tolstoy on American Liberty.—Although Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, New York City, never surrendered the decoration bestowed upon him by the Kaiser, and though he had delivered sundry sound scoldings to England for her professed fears of German aggression, in the days before the war, his name stands out conspicuously among a considerable number of heads of colleges for the suppression of free speech and liberty of conscience in regard to the war. A number of the professors, several of international fame, were compelled to resign under the pressure exercised from above, and Columbia became known for its spirit of intolerance. Among those who felt this was Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of the famous Russian author and philosopher, himself a man of distinction in those fields.

In February, 1917, even before we entered the war, Tolstoy’s engagement to deliver a lecture at a meeting of the International Club in the assembly room of Philosophy Hall, Columbia University, was summarily cancelled, although he had delivered the same lecture without molestation at Princeton a few days before. In an interview the distinguished savant said:

“The action of Columbia University was no insult to me. It was an insult to the vaunted institution of free speech in this country. I shall go back to Russia and tell them the story. I shall tell them how New York prevented me from giving the lecture I gave before thousands in Moscow. They will be astonished. My countrymen have made your heralded freedom of speech a shibboleth of liberty—in our land.... It matters little. I am surprised, but not hurt. Only I have learned that Russia has much more freedom from personal prejudice, in many ways, than this country has.”—New York “American,” February12,1917.