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The American Testament
of a Revolutionary

LEE ELIHU LOWENFISH

ORN in the Ukraine in 1897, Joseph Freeman emigrated
ith his family to Brooklyn in 1904. In his new country
he became, after the encouragement received at Colum¬
bia, a genuine romantic and a stubborn idealist, two strains that
dominated his life thtoughout the years no matter how he chose
to use his remarkable talents. He was, first of all, a poet influenced
in his writing by the linglish he learned from reading the roman¬
tic writers. He was also an orator, who led his debating teams in
high school and Columbia College, and who throughout the 1920s
and 1930s preached the gospel of idealistic communism. He was,
finally, a journalist, who upon graduating from the Columbia
School of Journalism in 1920 became one of the youngest Ameri¬
can o\'erseas correspondents in Europe. He was the author of sev¬
eral books, most notably. An American Testament, an autobiog¬
raphy published in 1936, and a long novel about European history
from the Roman Empire to the twentieth century. Never Call
Retreat, issued in 1943.

During his years as a Columbia undergraduate Freeman earned
a Phi Beta Kappa key and attracted the attention of many of his
professors. The philosopher, Frederick ^^'oodbridge, later Dean
 

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