1938: Carlyle King under attack for pacifistic views
Anti-British,
anti-imperialistic and pacifistic views were not widely accepted in
Saskatchewan in 1938. As Assistant
Professor of English Carlyle King found out, such views could jeopardize your
employment.
An outspoken pacifist and CCF
activist, King made a series of speeches in 1938. In each speech he criticized British imperialism, attacked the
policies of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and called for
international disarmament.
In its coverage of King’s
speeches, the Star Phoenix ran
such provocative headlines as “Should not Fight for the British Empire,”
“British Foreign Policy Criticized by Professor,” and “Professor King in Bitter
Attack on Chamberlain.” Not
surprisingly, such headlines prompted a strong reaction. King was attacked by individuals, by
newspaper editorialists, by at least four branches of the Canadian Legion, and
by such Anglo organizations as the Sons of England Benefit Society, and the
English Speaking League of Saskatchewan.
Eight submissions were made to the University’s Board of Governors, only
one in King’s defence.
He was accused of being a
seditious communist and his pacifistic views were ridiculed. There was fear that King was influencing his
students and demands that “measures necessary to protect students from
subversive influence be taken at once.”
One man told the president he would send his children elsewhere to avoid
leftist doctrine.
After two meetings with
President James Thomson, King decided to “refrain completely from public
speeches on the subject of peace.”
There is no record of the meetings and it is difficult to estimate the
effect on a junior professor when a university president warns him about what
he says in public. In a letter to Frank
Underhill in the spring of 1938, King was unequivocal in stating that he had
been coerced into silence by the president and concluded that “this man Thomson
has the makings of a first-rate fascist.”
King had tested free speech
and found that there were sharp limits to what could be said in Saskatchewan
and the University in 1938. His
political beliefs, however, did not hurt his career. In 1950 he became head of English and would become vice-principal
of the Saskatoon campus. A branch of
the Saskatoon Public Library is named in his honour.1
| Related Collections |  |
C.A. King fonds, MG 52.
| Images | |
1938a: Carlyle King, 1964.
Photograph Collection, A-4714.
1938b: “Does Academic Freedom
Exist in this University?” The Sheaf,
30 September 1938.
| Sources | |
1. On Campus News,
3 November 1995.
|
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