The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-03-09

gross hypocrisy affect to do other wise than they did Because they did not conform to the wishes of the powers that be, they are to be subjected to discipline.
 Oh, this is not the first time that such a condition has developed Any person who ran counter to con- ventional opinion and to the wishes of the economically powerful has had to suffer. Scott Nearing makes bad break in the University of Pennsylvania and is canned; a J. Allen Smith submits the national institutions to scientific historical criticism and a big howl goes up for his removal from the University of Washington faculty. These are minor instances.
 The number of men who have been dismissed for daring to enter tain an independent political opin- ion would fill an encyclopedia volume.
 As We see it, there can be no greater reproach to the sense of liberty among the people than when they insist that men shall be pun ished for daring to utter the truth that is in them. That they cannot, without utter self reproach, fail to do. And the minute that public men are to become public hypocrites yelling their own belief under con formation to that of the majority. they bring the public life and the public institutions at once into contempt
 The business men who invited Lafollette to lecture to them surely will be none the worse for hearing man who is at variance politically with their firmest belief. It is by the clash of antaginistic opinion that the truth itself is polished, and tos that alone as Max Muller so ably said must men hold as all that is worth while.
 The absurdity of withdrawing an invitation to talk from man because of his views on the inter national or any other situation is simply placing a premium upon suppressing freedom of speech, but that would be no new thing. It has in all ages been the way of those folks who wanted things just a certain way. to come down fiat footed and try to silence those who failed to agree with them. The story of such effort is lurid one enough: it has gibbets and scaffolds and stakes and headsman's blocks standing grim and threatening on every page And the gibbet and the block and the stake became possible of realization only after public odium had begun in the small ways such as was visited upon the public men in the beginnings.
 There is no questioning the right of these public men to vote and act as their conscience dictated. That they had courage enough and man. hood enough to do as they have done should be a source of admira- tion to every person in the country whether they agreed with them or not.
 It takes courage to face a major ity excitedly demanding to steam roll measures through Congress, and fanatically endeavoring to excite contempt for every opponent as Q coward or a lagggard or a traitor. It takes some courage and of a very high order to face that frenzy and to oppose it and resist it and to endeavor to thwart it. Which is precisely what these few who op- posed the armament bill have done.
 They may be right or they may have been wrong in opposing the bill. But they acted in opposing it most assuredly right when they followed as the truth which they saw led them regardless of the consequences. There can be no question about that. and the efforts to cast odium upon them is coward ly and vicious but very natural for all that.
 It would be very exceptional If such powers as support extreme measures in the foreign policy of the nation tolerated any opposition