Jewish Community Relations Council, Boston, Massachusetts

              
practically unchallenged;* This is
gelling to be a serious business. It
sceras that every few weeks, now,
Boston is held up before the country
as decadent, racially biased, ultra-
prudish, intolerant of free speech or
even seething with crime.
" The latest is the charge that the
teachers in the Boston public schools
are "sowing the seeds of the third
world war by telling the pupils that
the next war will be with Russia and
that they might as well be prepared for
it." The man who made this charge,
when questioned about it, admitted
that lie had no first-hand evidence to
back up his charge, but merely that
he had heard it said by a speaker in
the Ford Hall Forum, a certain Miss
Ella Winter employed by a New York
newspaper.
That an educated man holding a
responsible position before, the public
should repeat and amplify such a
charge without seeking to verity the
facts is almost unbelievable. But the
authorities who permit publicity seekers to come to Boston and make such
charges without being able to back
up their statements by concrete
evidence are certainly open to censure.
• This is not to imply that Boston
should put any brakes on the privilege
of free speech. Free speech was born
right here in Boston in Faneuil Hall,
at a time when it was almost unknown
in any other country in the world,
and where the things that were said
here against the foreign oppressor
might well have been paid for by the
death penalty. Biit free .speech does
not mean, freedom to libel and to
tarnish the name of the whole community, as is being done so often in
recent years.
To recall an instance of some
weeks ago, a magazine "with a national circulation went out of its way
to belittle the people of Boston and
sneeHngly published a photograph of
a couple, of South Boston boys who
were referred to as "tough" specimens. Did it ever occur to the editors
of this magazine that they could have
taken similar pictures of worse slums
and of tougher specimens in New York,
where the editors live, or in Chicago.
or New Orleans or even in that typical
American city, Memphis, Tenn., which
has the worst homicide record of any
city in the country?
We find that similar magazines and
i newspapers, some of them with semi-
communistic connections, start a
clamor of derision every time the
Boston authorities attempt to clamp,
the censorship on some particularly!
vicipus, obscene new book." Apparently, in their opinion, there is no
filth too foul to put in the hands of
their children in the name of free
speech or free press. Instead of attacking the sources of, publications that are
intaminating the public mind with
lihe 61th that seems to be a necessary
|backlog for every -new "best seller,"
they deride the men who make an
honest aUcmpl,to cleanse the atmosphere.
We think it is high time that the
various organizations representing
Boston—church, cultural, civic, and
even a business organisation such as
the Chamber of Commerce—should
baud together in a co-operative effort
lo put an end to these loud speakers
who come here and besmirch the good
name of our city. We think it is not
beyond the bounds of ordinary fairness that before such speakers are
allowed to- make public their charges
they should be made to verify the
tatcntcnts as to facts.
Perhaps if one or more of these false
larms were hauled  before a grand
jury for libel or slander, they might be
a   bit   more   wary  of   making   wild
j charges.