Woman in Wisconsin

The University of Wisconsin stands for free speech. Affixed proudly to the wall of its Bascom Hall is a bronze tablet celebrating "that fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

But the University of Wisconsin will not stand for loose speech. The following speech is considered immoral by the University of Wisconsin: "I believe in two or three companionate marriages before one settles down. How else can one be sure unless one has experimented? A woman should always experiment before marriage, just as a man does. There should be no need to lie about it."

Such was the fine distinction that emerged last week from a perplexed and not unamusing situation in Madison, Wis. The soul-stirring subject of "companionate marriages" had been filling periodicals of the high-minded kind for which President Glenn Frank of the University of Wisconsin writes articles. Eager intellects of the Wisconsin Student Forum heard that the wife of famed Philosopher Bertrand Russell of England was coming to the U. S. to lecture in connection with the publication of her "fearless," "astounding" and rather trite book, The Right to Be Happy. The Student Forum invited Mrs. Russell to lecture on "Companionate Marriages" and looked forward to hearing a "vital and significant message"--until it learned the kind of thing Mrs. Russell would probably say, as quoted above.

Shocked by the insouciance of Mrs. Russell's "experimental" attitude toward sex, startled into realization of what polyandry might mean if honestly recognized at a co-educational institution, Students Frederick Hyslop and Frederick Joachim of the Forum went to President Glenn Frank, asked him what they had better do.

"I gave it as my opinion," said Dr. Frank later, "that Mrs. Russell had indulged in an exhibition of very bad taste and said that if I were a member of the Student Forum I would not favor bringing her to address a mixed audience."

So Mrs. Russell's lecture was cancelled and the Student Forum breathed more freely, having escaped the blushful consequences of its own temerity by a road which did not contravene Wisconsin's broad avenue of free speech. In their excitement, however, the students quite missed Dr. Frank's subtler point and announced that the cancellation was on "moral" grounds instead of the less debatable ground of good taste.

How accurately Dr. Frank had described Mrs. Russell's case, and the embarrassment his dictum created, are another story. For Mrs. Russell turned out to be not merely an intelligent woman with honest opinions but a determined woman with a Mission. Shunned by young campus monogamists, delicately flayed by Dr. Frank, she went along to Madison, Wis., undaunted, to be the guest of Dr. Frank's chief pedagogical lieutenant, Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, whose wife is also intellectual, intense. There she stayed while one effort after another was made to let her put her "message" across to the young men and women of Wisconsin. The Public Study Group took her up and engaged the local Labor Temple. But hard-laboring local monogamists objected. Then the Assembly Chamber of the State Capitol was sought, despite the fact that admissions could not be charged there. But monogamous clerics and clubwomen cried out and even that historic license was revoked. Free speech seemed indeed at stake in Madison, Wis., until finally the parish house of the Unitarian Church was obtained.

The evening of the lecture, young Wisconsin and a few pawky oldsters hustled around to the Unitarian Church to learn from Mrs. Russell what they could have learned about "companionate marriage" from the lips of Queen Cleopatra and Sadie Thompson, to wit, that if she is mentally and physically suited to that sort of thing, and knows how to take care of herself, any woman can "experiment"--and many a woman does--without shame and without making public orations.

* Dr. Frank, 40, is one of three "young" heads of huge universities. The other two: Dr. Max Mason, 50, of the University of Chicago; Dr. Clarence Cook Little, 39, of the University of Michigan. *Last week. Mrs. Meiklejohn (Miss Helen Everett) lectured to her husband's pupils in Wisconsin's Experimental College Forum on "Human Factors in the British Coal Situation."