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There was an open forum being conducted at the Commercial High School, under the direction of the Rev. John Haynes Holmes. The authorities now required that this open forum should submit a week in advance the names of all proposed speakers. They barred Frank Tannenbaum, an East Side boy who had gone to jail in 1913 as a result of a demonstration of the unemployed, and who subsequently, as a student at Columbia University, had made himself an authority on prison reform. They barred Lincoln Steffens for the offense of having been President Wilson’s personal investigator in Russia. Finally, some one asked Dr. Holmes a question about Lenin, and he replied that he regarded Lenin as a great statesman. For this they barred Dr. Holmes. Then came the Rev. Howard Melish, prominent clergyman of Brooklyn, who praised Dr. Holmes and condemned the board of education. After that the board issued a pledge, which must be signed by all speakers. Among those who refused to sign it was Rabbi Stephen S. Wise; and so the board closed the forum. As one of the teachers said to me, “What they want people to lecture about is Moonlight in Venice.”