70 years ago today - Mar 2, 1950

[Spencer W. Kimball]

I now learned that THE PEN, the literary magazine of the University had been given with other books and pamphlets to the delegates and that this PEN was a vicious tirade and insult to the Church again. [He describes articles and authors including Dale Morgan, Ray West, Maurine Whipple, Vardis Fisher, Laury Cracroft, Wallace Stenger & Fawn Brodie] ... I resented it with all the power of my soul. As I went home I stopped at the home of LeVan and he gave me his copy. I exploded when it was suggested that 'no harm was intended' and that it was but the stupid act of a little girl editor. This was the attitude of many people I was to meet in the next few days. I was so angry when I looked through this PEN that I rebuked them with all my power thru [sic] my poor relatives who had to sit and listen. To think that our own members (largely) in the name of 'freedom of thinking and speech' would defame and tear down and vilify! And to think that editor members of the Church would gather these vilifiers together to discredit the Church; and above all to think that these numerous members of the Church would sit blandly down and ignore insult to themselves, their forbears and their Church and prophets was almost more than I could bear. This was not the last of it.

[Spencer W. Kimball Diary, as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1910-1951, Privately Published, Salt Lake City, Utah 2010]

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