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Show -8- roughly into paddy wagons, and hauled them off to jail? After the relatively recent events of the McCarthy hearings, the Professor could feel little sympathy for the committee members, who had, after all, been subject only to some mild verbal abuse? His entire sympathy was with the students. He was furious at the police for responding with such zealous violence. The Professor did not consider himself a radical. He had been too busy with his writing and teaching to take an active part in politics? He thought of himself as a liberal and a pacifist?3 It is true that at one time during the Depression he had sought out radical causes, thinking them a possible solution of the country's problems? He had been admiring? even a little envious? of the radical's energetic devotion; but? as time went on? he had grown more and more uncomfortable with their unthinking single-mindedness? He still remembered a rejection slip he had received from one of the small radical Journals of the 1930's. The editor had written:"Your story is puzzling? There is an element of revolt in it? but it is unclear what you are rebelling against or what you propose to do about it?" The story? which had been about"sugar beet workers in the fields of Utah? presented the hardship of the hands, mature men who were reduced to doing the work of children for wages that could not keep them or their families alive. The author? who at the time was not yet the Professor, but a high school |