First Casualties

When the Massachusetts Legislature decided to require an oath of loyalty from every teacher in the State, a host of angry professors, led by impulsive Harvard Geologist Kirtley Mather, galloped out to do battle for the cause of academic freedom (TIME, Oct. 19). Because their universities dared not follow, the professors presently scampered back, took their oaths.

Last week, while Professor Mather fulminated from the security of his classroom, the first two casualties in the Battle of the Oath occurred at nearby Tufts College (Medford). Both were department chairmen. Rather than sign unconditional oaths, both offered their resignations to Tufts' President John Albert Cousens, himself a strong opponent of the oath. President Cousens and his trustees, fearing for the college's legislative charter, regretfully accepted the resignations.

In Alfred Church Lane, 72, Tufts lost a distinguished geologist, onetime president of the Geological Society of America. Old Dr. Lane, well past the retirement age and eligible for a pension, observed that his fellow casualty ''has much more at stake." But Economist Earl Micajah Winslow, 39, a Mayflower descendant and a Quaker, will probably be welcomed as a martyr on the faculty of any university in the 22 states which have no teachers' oath law.

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