It had been understood that Professor Kiang was to return to the University of California; but now the Black Hand got busy. Not merely was there a flaw in Kiang’s marriage certificate; also, he was a leading Chinese Socialist, one of the founders of that movement in his own country. So he received from President Barrows a cruel and insolent letter, informing him that he was not to return. It was practically the same thing as the Gorki story, and both Gorki and Kiang were enemies of the interlocking directorate. But Semenoff was their friend, so you do not find Colonel Barrows, in espousing his Cossack hero, mentioning the fact that Semenoff was traveling in America with a lady not his wife; still less do you find him mentioning those thirty most beautiful women in Semenoff’s “summer car!”
Becoming aware of the Black Hand and its power in the institution, independent-minded men seek other occupations; the sycophants and the sluggards remain, and as a result, the quality of the teaching goes down. Every year the boys and girls pour in from the cities and ranches of California, and they are commanded to study dull subjects under dull instructors, and they prefer football and flirtation. In Berkeley there are twelve thousand, and in the Southern branch in Los Angeles four or five thousand more. Immorality is more common than scholarship; the conditions have become a scandal throughout the state, and our imperialist president finds himself with a peck of trouble on his hands, a board of quarreling regents who cannot agree what is to be done. There is a flaw, apparently, in Colonel Barrows’ doctrine of the strong man; the strong man does not always rule—especially when he is a stupid man! So our “soldier president” has just asked to be excused from his job, and allowed to become once more a humble Professor of Political Ignorance.
P. S.—After this book has been put into type an interesting development occurs at Berkeley. The editors of an independent student publication, the “Laughing Horse,” asked my permission to quote extracts from these chapters, and they printed six or eight pages in their issue of November, 1922. The publication created great excitement at the university, and a senior student by the name of Butler went to a magistrate and swore out a warrant for the arrest of Roy Chanslor, the “Laughing Horse” editor, upon the charge of publishing obscene matter. The pretext was another article in the magazine, a letter from D. H. Lawrence, the English novelist, reviewing and strongly condemning as immoral a novel by Ben Hecht. But the real reason was obviously the passages from “The Goose-step.” The “Daily Californian,” the student paper, gave the thing away, denouncing “the printing of disgusting articles by Upton Sinclair and other perverted ‘knockers.’ To jolt the university they hurled and blatted the most unprecedented compilations of lies that has (sic) yet found expression in these parts. At first the students rose in righteous wrath to ‘tar and feather’ the perpetrators of such foul, insane blusterings.”