-~----
--
SIDNEY HOOK
701
document from which I read, the Council naturally rejected the
overtures from the College Teachers Union. In the course of the dis–
cussion, however, Colston C. Warne, of Amherst College, had heat–
edly arisen to take issue with me. In his rather incoherent speech try–
ing to explain away the official document from which I had read as
"sectarian," and not representative of the true statements of the Col–
lege Teachers Union of which he was a proud member, he alluded to
me as a "Trotskyist." Most of the Council members didn't understand
the meaning or the relevance of the term. I shall never forget, how–
ever, the retort of
A.].
Carlson, speaking in his thick unmistakable
Swedish accent: "Excuse me Professor Warne, the only persons I
know who call others Trotskyists are Stalinists!" That silenced Col–
ston Warne who, almost needless to say, was a leading sponsor of
the Waldorf Conference, a speaker at one of its sessions, and a par–
ticipant at the Wroclaw Congress.
After I telephoned Carlson and sent him the relevant docu–
ments, he sent a strong letter of protest to Shapley with a carbon
copy to Thomas Mann (See Appendix). The conference officials
denied ever receiving it and to the bitter end listed Carlson as a
sponsor. Carlson was only one of the many sponsors to whom I had
written, and although most of them refused to take a public stand
against the conference, they forwarded my letter to Shapley with
strong recommendations that a place be made for me on the pro–
gram. Whereupon Shapley wrote me a letter dated March 18, 1949,
the first paragraph of which read:
Several of the sponsors and participants in our coming Cultural
and Scientific Conference for World Peace have sent me the let–
ters you have written them. In some of these communications I
regret to see that you have made plain mis-statements of fact.
For example, neither President Davis or Dr. Shipler have writ–
ten me any instruction or request or communication whatever
with regard to your demand
(sic!)
that you be placed on the Con–
ference program.
Addressed to me at New York University, I received it on
Monday, March 21. That afternoon a reporter from the
New York
Times
telephoned me and in belligerent tones asked me what I had to
say about Dr. Shapley's statement that I was "a downright liar."
Either Shapley had made a copy of his letter to me available to the
press or someone from the conference's office had leaked it. I told
the reporter that I was prepared to make the letters of President Davis
and Dr. Shipler public and that if Shapley was telling the truth about
