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Later, Dr. Wolfson was ordered to enforce a rule forbidding the New York “Call” to be carried in class-rooms or study-halls. So he wrote a dignified letter to the board of superintendents, explaining: “Frankly, during the last two or three years I have not felt free to follow the intellectual habits of a lifetime.” Superintendent Ettinger came back with a letter to the New York “Times,” declaring:

I am very frank to confess that I dissent most heartily from the basic thesis set up by Principal Wolfson that it is the function of our schools to allow students and teachers to express their belief freely, to meet argument with argument, and not either overtly or covertly to suppress opinions which are held in honesty and in good faith.

It is not often that the gang is so frank as that, so we owe thanks to Superintendent Ettinger. Wishing to give him all the fame to which he is entitled, I mention that to a reporter of the New York “Call” he declared that he would bar H. G. Wells from the school forums of New York for having said that Lenin was a great man!