Silas Timberman by Howard Fast Page B

them.
    â€œWe did some cold, hard-headed research on this question—and we are willing to let the facts speak for themselves. We went to the library and examined a year—1949—of publications, various shades of red. The Daily Worker , alas, was not among them, but we found three solid party-liners and checked references to and quotes from Mark Twain. Among the three, we found a total of ninety-seven references and seventeen separate quotations. And all of them favorable, we need not say.
    â€œIn other words, Samuel B. Clemens, take it or leave it, is the most popular in the American red galaxy of writers. The facts show it; they also show that the closest runner-up, Theodore Dreiser, is mentioned only fourteen times in all three publications and quoted only three times.
    â€œOur colleague holds that neither he nor Mark Twain is responsible for what the reds do; but what is important is that they do it. We tend to become a little impatient with the fuzzy thinking of liberals who pick up the red bait, ad nauseum. Even a child does not burn itself twice at the same stove. The so-called ‘liberals’ play a dreary tune to the effect that anyone who shows some hard-headed, everyday common sense in face of the red menace is a reactionary. But aren’t the true liberals those who fight consistently to keep the red terror from triumphing in America?
    â€œThere is a woolly kind of logic that holds writers like Mark Twain to be sacred, and the commies gleefully use this logic. But let us just suppose that the enemy seized a pile of cannon balls from the War of Independence and fired them square at us. Would we cheerfully stand up to be killed, holding that these cannon balls were sacred, no matter which way they were flying? We would not. We would state flatly and unequivocally that these are weapons of the enemy which must be destroyed.
    â€œWe know that the analogy is contrived, but we hold that it is nevertheless valid. The misused professor does not have our sympathies. We may leave his motives to be decided at some future date, but we have a firm opinion about his results. We do not yet believe that Clemington is a haven for the teaching of communism.”
    Silas finished reading, went back to the first editorial, read a paragraph or two over again, and then shook himself out of the trance into which he had fallen.
    â€œGood Lord,” he said.
    He brought out pipe and matches, and then decided that he wanted a cigarette very much and began to hunt through his desk drawers for one. Lawrence Kaplin walked in then, and asked whether he was looking for something.
    â€œA cigarette?”
    Kaplin gave him one, lit it for him, and watched him smoke for a moment. “Reading, Silas?” he asked gently.
    â€œDamn it! Have you read this?”
    â€œSilas, I don’t think there’s anyone at the university who hasn’t read it by now. Fulcrum is sold out, and the issue of Monday, October 30th, will unquestionably become a collector’s item.”
    â€œBut what on earth does it mean?”
    â€œYou know what it means, Silas. It means that if you give youngsters a free hand in publishing and editing a paper, they’re going to pull a whopper every so often. This is it.”
    â€œBut how the devil did they know—?”
    â€œEveryone knew, Silas. I knew. Selma knew. You know how that kind of thing gets around.”
    â€œBut these aren’t just youngsters—they’re capable journalists. I know Morse—” He thought of him then, a small, sandy-haired, thin-faced man of twenty-five, a war veteran, sharp, alert, bitter. He had taken four classes with Silas—too bitter, perhaps, in school on the GI Bill of Rights and saturated with a love for literature and contempt for word-mongering. How did he work and write alongside of Hoffenstein?
    â€œWho is Hoffenstein?” he asked Kaplin. “I don’t think I know him.”
    â€œI don’t