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 35York 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 36find 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 37“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; 38but 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!
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