Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

128 страница из 161

But it had been the custom when election time came round for the history and civics department to take a straw ballot for the presidency; and this time the dreadful discovery was made that three hundred and fifty-four out of the two thousand students had voted for Debs! It was proposed to tell this news in the school weekly, but the superintendent in charge ordered this paper suppressed, and rebuked Dr. Wolfson for taking the straw vote. Dr. Wolfson pointed out that the “Literary Digest” was doing the same thing. Also, if the students were for Debs, would it do any good to suppress the fact? Would it not be best to face the fact and deal with it? A little later Dr. Wolfson got his orders about Russia; no longer was there to be free discussion; he was to teach one view and only one view—that is, the official propaganda of the young secretaries of our State Department who, with their aristocratic Russian wives, were conducting a private war against the Russian people without authorization from Congress.