Although intensely human and consumingly interested in humanity--both in the mass and as individuals, whether of his own race or any other--Booker Washington thought and acted to an uncommon degree on the impersonal plane. This characteristic was perhaps most strikingly illustrated in his attitude toward race prejudice. When, many years ago, he had charge of the Indian students at Hampton, and had occasion to travel with them, he found they were free to occupy in the hotels any rooms they could pay for, whereas he must either go without or take a room in the servants' quarters. He regarded these experiences as interesting illustrations of the illogical nature of race prejudice. The occupants of these hotels did not resent mingling with members of a backward race whose skin happened to be red, but they did object to mingling on the same terms with members of another backward race whose skin happened to be black. It apparently never entered his head to regard this discrimination with bitterness or as a personal rebuff. One could not, however, make a greater mistake than to assume from this impersonal attitude that he condoned race prejudice, or in any sense stood as an apologist for it. To dispel any such idea one has only to recall his speech at the Peace Jubilee in Chicago after the Spanish War, from which we have already quoted, and in which he characterized racial prejudice as "a cancer gnawing at the heart of the Republic, that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army without or within."