Books: On Keeping Free

LIBERTY—Everett Dean Martin—Norton ($3).

In Manhattan’s Cooper Union, largest free forum for the discussion of political and educational questions in the U. S., thousands of Manhattanites have heard Everett Dean Martin, director of the People’s Institute, calmly, pungently discuss many a knotty point. Skeptical, intelligent, educated, he is a propagandist for the liberal attitude, for the cultured and inquiring mind. Now and then in his spare time he writes a book. Liberty, chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club for June, was written last summer at Wauwinet, Nantucket Island. Confesses Inquirer Martin: “Our people have little of the philosophy of freedom. . . . The things which we take for granted are the things for which we no longer fight. But when a populace becomes indifferent to its freedom, it begins to lose it.” Liberty, once a matter of politics, has now become an affair of individual psychology. “Would you be free? Then first become civilized. To understand this bit of ancient wisdom is to distinguish the true liberal from his vociferous imitator.” The struggle for freedom, says Author Martin, is a conflict of cultural values. Romantic ideas such as Rousseau made popular and hoped to make universal are as inimical to the cause of liberty as any other form of intolerance. Tolerance and liberty can prevail “only so long as the influence of a civilized minority holds sway.” Mr. Martin is skeptical, not to say suspicious, of the present trend of social organization. “It is precisely because it seems to be necessary to give up so many social liberties in modern industrial society that mankind must guard its personal rights with stubborn vigilance. . . . Resort to legislation should be the very last remedy proposed for the removal of abuse. … If you would keep your power over yourself, keep it off your neighbor.”

Everett Dean Martin, 50, tall, loose-jointed, has poppy, kindly eyes, a mouth like Irvin Cobb’s. He became associated with the People’s Institute in 1916, was made Director in 1922. Other books: The Behavior of Crowds, Psychology, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, The Mystery of Religion.