However, we are happy to say that some of our students resisted these Bolshevik blandishments, and gave proof of the principles we have instilled into them. We have a university paper called the “Daily Maroon,” which the radicals impudently dub the “Moron.” This paper next day had a report of the meeting, and it certainly was delightful the way they gave it to the oratorical author: “His talk was a more or less skilful combination of a frenzied street corner gathering (to be sure, there was no soap-box), and a lecture in Political Economy on capital and labor and the feudal system. All the old platitudes used for the last decade in liberal workmen’s papers were repeated.” You will not fail to appreciate the gentlemanly tone of that rebuke; and then, this most cruel cut of all: “One is tempted, too, to wonder what kind of novels Mr. Sinclair writes; if they are as full of mistakes in grammar as his address last night, his publishers must be gray around the temples.” Reading the above, we were so much pleased that we sent marked copies to all the directors of the Standard Oil Company and the packers, so that our friends might have proof that the better classes of our students do not read socialistic books.
That was the end of the incident, except for a trick which the wretched Bolshevik played upon us. Would you believe it, he wasn’t cowed by the rebuke of the “Daily Maroon,” but actually tried to seduce our student body next afternoon by engaging in a tennis match with the champion of our university. Our champion beat him, though by an effort so mighty that it split his pants. But all the time the author was being beaten, he kept up a hypocritical pretense of good nature, intending thereby to win the regard of our young and unsophisticated undergraduates. In this purpose we are sorry to say he seemed to be successful, for next day the “Daily Maroon” appeared with a grave editorial, in which it took back at least a portion of the previous day’s well-deserved rebuke:
Upton Sinclair plays tennis more pleasingly than he talks or writes. Although he lost two sets to Captain Frankenstein yesterday afternoon, he did it with a grace that does not characterize his books and speeches. He played and lost like a sportsman. He gave no evident sign of petty displeasure at being defeated. One admires manliness, and one finds far more of it in witnessing Mr. Sinclair on the tennis court than in reading one of his tearful harangues of the yellow press which, he declares, has hounded him, and suppressed his thoughts.