"In a society that feels itself secure," he continued, "there will be considerable academic freedom, but in a society that feels itself insecure the probabilities are wide that all opinions that cut into the foundations of what those who rule believe to be the conditions of security will be challenged, The more remote a man's views seem to be from the centre of immediate discussion the less likely he is to be attacked," The techniques of control in this country were more gentle, more gracious in operation, and more hesitant in application than elsewhere, but it would be unwise to assume that the problem was not real.
He was disturbed by what he called the technique of pre-natal control, in selecting appointees for academic posts, of which he gave examples, and by the influence of prospective contributors to endowment funds on the expression of political opinions by members of university staffs. This delicate and complicated problem would have to be faced when social conflicts deepened and universities needed financial renewal after the war, No university was complete unless its students were faced with contradictory teachings and thereby compelled to straighten out the noble confusion in their own minds, The existence of such universities was going to depend on society's feeling of security about its foundations, The graver its problems and the deeper its sense of strain the more difficult would be the maintenance of the atmosphere that progress in the social sciences required,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.