More Freedom from Hereditary Bias
8 State Circle, Annapolis, Md.,
9 February, 1918.Gentlemen:
I have your printed circular of 25 January, with an enclosed bill for a subscription to the Unpopular Review through 1918. I have, perhaps unfortunately, not received the January issue of the review, which you say you sent me. This is no doubt due to my removal from Princeton, New Jersey, and to the lethargic Princeton post-office.
I had several reasons for not renewing my subscription. One was a need for economy, and the feeling that I could better do without the Unpopular than without such a periodical as the New Republic. Of the two, the Unpopular mirrors much the more closely some of my own convictions and principles; but I find the New Republic indispensable if I am to keep in touch with the aims and purposes of present-day American Liberalism.
Another reason I had for not renewing was that the Unpopular, starting its career with the very greatest promise, had, to my humble mind, managed very quickly to run up various side-tracks and blind alleys of opinion, and has since—amiably but with complacency—stuck there. And there I am content to leave it, for in losing reality it has lost life.
The lightness of touch which its editor has creditably sought to impart to its contents will not do as a substitute for life. And even that attempt has failed; it has resulted too often in mere pertness or a lumbering buffoonery never agreeable to contemplate, and least of all when invoked in aid of a cause that demands above all earnest conviction and anything but a stupid complacency from its adherents.
Yours faithfully,
(signed) Robert Shafer.
It may be interesting to compare with this a letter from another correspondent with a German name, printed in Number 17.