THE PATRIOTIC PACK

The phrase "patriotic pack" applied derisively and indiscriminately to you and me leaves a most disagreeably sour taste. In its current issue, the "New York Nation" comments editorially on the case of Professor James McKeen Cattell of Columbia University, who was dismissed in 1917 "without proper charges or heating, accused of 'sedition, treason, and opposition to the enforcement of the law of the United States'" Subsequently, he sued the trustees for libel and demanded the pension to which he was nominally untitled. An award of 245,000 was recently made him. It is a question, avers the "Nation", whether in 1917 the jury would have awarded the verdict in the man's favour, despite the justice of his cause. "But," concludes the comment, "times have changed, and universities can no longer bully a professor as they felt free to do when they had the patriotic pack behind them."

Shades of the maltreated "Three Soldiers"?

The considerations of the case itself are to us trifling; but those who come under the category dislike being dubbed the "patriotic pack", an organization evidently including every one in governmental service during the way. Satirizing what little patriotic idealism the country ever possessed seems to have become a well-accepted and non-offending bid for attention. With the "Nation", we are thankful that none of the "pack" is left.

To what nation, one wonders, does the title of this publication refer?