After this you will be prepared for any amount of hedging. President Butler had for ten years been conducting with President Wheeler of the University of California an ardent rivalry for the affections of the Kaiser; but now the interlocking directorate is going to “can the Kaiser,” and their university president is going to enlist in the speech-making brigade. Wheeler of California is three thousand miles away from the seat of authority, but Butler gets the “tip” in time, and saves himself by climbing out on the faces of those who took seriously his belief in universal peace.
For example, Leon Fraser, the young instructor who has been set to work organizing peace societies in American colleges, including Columbia! President Butler had sent a dean to ask Professor Beard to take Fraser into his department; now he sent the dean to ask Beard to drop Fraser again. Professor Beard, who has a capacity for indignation, told the dean that Fraser had done what he had been employed to do, and had done it sincerely and capably, therefore it was his intention to propose Fraser for a full professorship; and then Beard showed the dean to the door. Beard took the matter to the members of his department, and they agreed unanimously that Fraser should be promoted.
Knowing Butler as you now do, you will understand that he marked two more victims on his blacklist. One was Fraser and the other was Beard. Fraser was got rid of quickly; as soon as America entered the war, Butler announced that Columbia would not need so many professors, so he dropped three, Fraser among them. Subsequently he took back the other two; but Fraser meantime had enlisted. The dean remarked to a friend of mine, a Columbia professor, how fortunate it was that Fraser had gone to the war, so that a scandal over the question of his dismissal had been avoided. “Yes,” replied my friend, “and wouldn’t it be fortunate if he were shot to pieces, so that he could never come back and tell how Columbia treated him?”
The next experience in order of time is that of Professors Cattell and Dana; but since we have seen Beard put on the blacklist, perhaps we had better finish his story. Charles A. Beard is a sincere and determined fighter; incidentally, he is one of America’s leading economists and scholars. There was an uproar in the newspapers over the charge that a labor leader, speaking at a civic center in a New York public school, had said: “To hell with the stars and stripes.” He didn’t really say it, as you may read in “The Brass Check,” page 344. But the New York papers reported that he said it, so it was proposed to close all the civic centers in the schools. Professor Beard at a public meeting stated that he did not think it was wise to close all the schools to the public, just because one labor leader was reported to have said, “To hell with the stars and stripes.” So next morning one of the New York newspapers reported that Professor Beard of Columbia University had defended a labor leader for saying “To hell with the stars and stripes.”