“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!