Eighteen years after a storm of controversy was aroused over his championship of the policemen in the Boston police strike of 1920 and the epithet "Bolshevik" was hurled at his head, Harold J. Laski, former lecturer and tutor in the department of History, Government and Economics, urged socialism as a means of preventing "a new and dark age," in a Ford Hall Forum lecture last night.

Laski, who is now professor of Political Science in the University of London, resigned from the University to take his present position after the board of Overseers had refused to take any action against him in spite of vehement protests on his attitude, allegedly favoring the striking policemen.

Silent on Hicks

Asked after his talk on "The Present Outlook" to comment on the recent appointment of Granville Hicks as Counselor in American History, Laski said, "Eighteen years ago I would have had something to say; I have nothing now."

Hicks has been branded a "Communist" and his appointment violently opposed by patriotic organizations and local political officials. The difference between the two cases lies in the fact that the Laski controversy was started by an issue of the Lampoon devoted to an attack on him, while no student group has come out against the Hicks appointment.

Describing the present British foreign policy as "an evil policy dedicated to the preservation of the decaying structure of European capitalism," Laski said that the new rearmament program will make any constructive social program impossible for more than a generation. The tax rate necessary to support both would be impossible, he said.

Wants Militant Socialism

"The choice is between the concentration camp and the battlefield," Laski declared, advocating a militant socialist policy, "and the time has come for Ideal Right to take Might unto itself."

Felix Frankfurter, Byrne Professor of Administrative Law, presided at the Forum during the 45 minute question period. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's two sons, Joseph P. Jr. '38, and John F. '40 and their grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald, former mayor of Boston, were at the Forum and spoke with Laski afterwards.