THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS
What is the function of an American university president? Apparently it
is to travel about the country, and summon the captains and the kings of
finance, and dine in their splendid banquet halls, and lay down to them
the law and the gospel of predation. I consult the name of Nicholas
Murray Butler in the New York Public Library, and I find a long list of
pamphlets, each one immortalizing a plutocratic feast; the Annual
Luncheon of the Associated Press, 1916; the Annual Dinner of the
Commercial Club of Kansas City, 1908, the Annual Dinner of the
Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, 1917, the Annual Dinner of the
Association of Cotton Manufacturers, Springfield, Mass., 1917, the
Annual Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York,
1911, the Annual Dinner of the American Bankers’ Association—and so on.
In addressing these mighty men of money there is no cruelty which our
interlocking president will not endorse and defend, no vileness of
slander he will not perpetrate against those who struggle for justice in
our commercial hell. “Political patent medicine men,” he calls us; and
he tells the masters of the clubs and bayonets, the gas-bombs and
machine-guns that we seek our ends “by some means—violent if possible,
peaceable if necessary”; he tells about Socialists “whose conception of
government is a sort of glorified lynching.”
And all this, you understand, not referring to the Bolsheviks; this in
the days of the “Bull Moose”! In his speech before the Republican State
Convention in 1912 President Butler portrayed the struggle with the
Progressives as one “to decide whether our government is to be
Republican or Cossack”! He discussed proposals to amend the
constitution, saying it was like “proposing amendments to the
multiplication table”! In the year 1911 we find him before the 143d
Annual Banquet of the New York Chamber of Commerce, stating that “our
business men are attacked,” and that this constitutes “civil war.” Our
political conventions are being besieged “by every crude, senseless,
half-baked scheme in the country”—a terrifying situation, and what is to
be done about it? The orator is ready with the answer: “Why should not
the associated business men of the United States unite to demand that
the next political campaign be conducted with a view to their oversight
and protection?”
The associated business men of the United States thought this was fine
advice, so through the agency of their Grand Old Party they nominated
Nicholas Murray Butler for the office of vice-president of the United
States. In that campaign Butler called one of his opponents, Theodore
Roosevelt, a demagog, and the other, Woodrow Wilson, a charlatan; and he
triumphantly polled the electoral votes of the states of Utah and
Vermont, a total of eight out of a possible four hundred and ninety-one.
But did that end the political ambitions of our interlocking president?
It did not. He gave an honorary degree to the senator who had helped him
carry the state of Utah, and continued diligently to cultivate the rich
and powerful. In 1916 we find him in the field again, and this time his
ambitions have swelled, he wishes to be President of the United States.
In 1920 he wishes it still more ardently; his campaign managers solemnly
assure the world that he will take nothing less. The “Literary Digest”
conducted a straw vote in the spring of 1920 to find out what the
American people wanted; 211,000 of them wanted General Wood, 164,000
wanted Senator Johnson, 20,000 of them wanted poor old Taft, and how
many of them do you think wanted Nicholas Miraculous? 2,369! But did
that trouble our interlocking president? It did not; because, you see,
he knows that the politicians nominate what the interlocking directorate
bids them nominate, and the people choose the least bad of the two
interlocking candidates—if they can find out which that is.
So President Butler’s campaign continued, and with the help of D. O.
Mills, the banker, and Elihu Root, the fox, and Bill Barnes, the
infamous, he corralled the sixty-eight delegates of the New York state
machine, and a few days before they departed for the Chicago convention
we find President Butler giving them a dinner and making them a speech
at the Republican Club. They went to Chicago, and in the hotel rooms
where the wires were pulled President Butler argued and pleaded and
fought, but in vain. One of the most prominent Republicans in the United
States described these scenes to me, and told of the pitiful, impotent
fury of Butler when finally Harding was nominated. He stormed about the
room, denouncing this man and that man. “Look what I did for him, this,
that and the other thing—and what he has done for me!” And when the
delegation returned from Chicago, Butler received the newspaper
reporters and poured out his balked egotism in a statement which
startled the country. He denounced the campaign backers of General Wood,
“a motley group of stock-gamblers, oil and mining promoters, munition
makers, and other like persons.” These men, he said, had “with reckless
audacity started out to buy the Presidency.” He went on to picture the
New York delegation, the heroic sixty-eight who had stood by President
Butler and saved the nation’s honor.
Then, of course, there was the devil let loose! General Wood came out in
the next day’s paper, denouncing Butler’s statement as “a vicious and
malicious falsehood.” It was necessary, said General Wood, “to brand a
faker and denounce a lie.” And also there was Procter, Ivory Soap
magnate, and General Wood’s principal backer, denouncing “this
self-seeking and cowardly attack.” President Butler was interviewed by
the New York “Times,” and was dignified. “I am sorry that General Wood
lost his temper. It does not sound well.” He went on to point out that
the New York “World” had exposed the corruptionists who were putting up
the money for General Wood; and this made lively material for the
Democratic campaign—you can imagine!
There was a hurried session of the trustees of the University of the
House of Morgan a day or two after that break of President Butler’s. I
have been told on the best authority what went on there; but you don’t
need to be told, you can imagine it. The interlocking president had
denounced “stock-gamblers,” and here on his board was one who had made
two million by cornering the market! He had denounced “mining
promoters,” and here was a director in three mining companies! He had
denounced “munition makers,” and here was the chairman of Remington Arms
and Union Metallic Cartridge! The trustees laid down the law, either an
apology or a resignation; and so, a couple of days later, the New York
newspapers published a statement from President Butler as follows:
“I am convinced that my word, spoken under the strain, turmoil and
fatigue of the Chicago convention, and in sharp revolt against the power
of money in politics, was both unbecoming and unwarranted and that I
should, and do, apologize to each and every one who felt hurt by what I
said.”
The American people may have failed to appreciate the services of the
president of their greatest university, but the plutocracy has
appreciated him, and has showered upon him all the honors at its
command. He has received honorary degrees from no less than twenty-five
universities; he is a trustee of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine,
and of the New York Life Insurance Company—the interlocking directorate!
He is a member of fifteen clubs, and author of eight books of speeches.
He has traveled abroad, and has been honored at Oxford and Cambridge, at
Strassburg and Breslau. He is a Commander of the Red Eagle (with star)
of Prussia, this honor dating from the year 1910.
In 1917-18 Nicholas Murray Butler was, of course, a vehement Hun-hunter;
he was also vehement in denouncing American Socialists, on the basis of
their supposed pro-Germanism. But let us go back ten years, to the time
when the seeds of the World War were being sown. What then was the
attitude of American Socialists, and what was the attitude of President
Butler?
In the year 1907 the author of “The Goose-step” published a study of
world conditions, “The Industrial Republic,” in which he showed how the
German Kaiser was drilling his people to make war on the world. The
English edition of this book was barred from Germany by the Kaiser’s
government. The book showed how the German Socialists were struggling
against their autocrat, and appealed to Americans to give their sympathy
and support. I quote:
I do not think that we shall sleep forever; I do not think that the
memories of Jefferson and Lincoln will call to us in vain forever; but
assuredly there never was in all American history a sign of torpor so
deep, of degeneration so frightful, as this fact that in such a
crisis, when the down-trodden millions of the German Empire are
struggling to free themselves from the tyranny of military and
personal government, there should come to them not one breath of
sympathy from the people of the American Republic! And all our
interest, all our attention, is for that strutting turkey-cock, the
war-lord whose mailed fist holds them down! That monstrous creature,
with his insane egotism, his blustering and his swaggering, his curled
mustachios and military poses! An epileptic degenerate....
And so on. It was strong language, but it seemed stronger than it does
now. And let us ask, who were the American glorifiers of the Kaiser at
whom these words were aimed? Head and front among them was Nicholas
Murray Butler! In that same year of 1907 President Butler was spending
the summer in Germany—arranging for the “epileptic degenerate” to send a
“Kaiser professor” to Columbia University, to heighten his prestige with
the American people! I have taken the trouble to look up this errand of
President Butler in Germany, and I quote one sample of what our
representative told the German people about their ruler. In the
“Norddeutscher Allgemeine Zeitung,” October 4, 1907, I read as follows:
A second more spirited honorer (Verehrer) of the Kaiser, Professor N.
M. Butler, the president of Columbia University, returns home today,
after a long sojourn in Germany. He explained among other things: “I
was twice invited to the Imperial table, and I can only explain that
the idea prevailing in America that the Kaiser is undependable is
entirely erroneous. On the contrary, his personality has something
uncommonly winning, and he possesses at the same time a democratic
streak in his nature. The industrial and political activity, not
merely of his own land, but of the entire world, awakens his most
eager interest. He is a genuine statesman, and if he were not Kaiser
he would surely become president.”
And then President Butler came home, and when some one jeered at the
Kaiser in the New York “Times,” he rushed to the rescue with a letter
full of glowing and eloquent praise; detailing all the virtues which a
great ruler and statesman might possess, and pointing out the Kaiser as
the sum of them all. It culminated with the sentence: “He would have
been chosen monarch or chief executive by popular vote of any modern
people among whom his lot might have been cast.”
In enthusiasm for Wilhelm our Miraculous Nicholas had been forestalled
by Harvard University, which had already established an exchange
professorship, and had got another Kaiser professor in the person of
Muensterberg, the eminent psychologist of the plutocracy, who used to
delight his employers by analyzing labor agitators in jail, and proving
by up-to-date psychological tests that they had done whatever crimes
they were accused of. There was bitter rivalry between these two Kaiser
professors, and still more bitter rivalry between the Harvard professor
and the Columbia professor in Berlin. For, of course, these exalted
scholars did not go to represent the American people, they went to
represent the plutocratic empire, and they did not appeal to the German
people, they appealed to the Kaiser’s court. The wives of these two
professors got into a scrap over the question of court precedence, and
denounced each other in the newspapers, and a Frenchman, writing a book
about Germany, described the Kaiser’s court chamberlain as “bewailing in
disgust the presence of increasing numbers of rich and well-gowned
American women who got on their knees to royalty, and on all occasions
betrayed their total lack of breeding and good manners.”
But, you see, a German court chamberlain fails to realize the drabness
of life in America, where the wives of eminent scholars have no way to
demonstrate their superiority over one another, and when they come to
places where there are courts and ceremonials they can hardly be blamed
if the glory goes to their heads. We can hardly blame President Butler,
because, after having had an eight-hour session with Kaiser Wilhelm, he
hailed his host as one of the greatest statesmen of all time; but I
think we may blame him just a little because he failed to imitate any of
the good things which the Kaiser had done, and chose only the despotic
things for his praise. For example, Kaiser Wilhelm had established
old-age pensions and unemployment insurance in Germany, and had
abolished child labor from the country; but President Butler came home
and in a telegram to the Illinois Bankers’ Association denounced the
child labor law in such ferocious terms that even the interlocking
directors were shocked, and refused to read the telegram at their
meeting, or to give it to the press!