Nicholas Murray Butler considers himself the intellectual leader of the American plutocracy; he takes that rôle quite frankly, and enacts it with grave solemnity, lending the support of his academic authority to the plutocracy’s instinctive greed. There has never been a more complete Tory in our public life; to him there is no “people,” there is only “the mob,” and he never wearies of thundering against it. “In working out this program we must take care to protect ourselves against the mob.” Socialism “would constitute a mob.” “Doubtless the mob will prefer cheering to its own whoopings,” etc.—all this fifteen years ago, in one speech at the University of California. President Wheeler of that university remarked to a friend of mine that this speech might have been made by Kaiser Wilhelm; and Wheeler ought to have known, for he had been the Kaiser’s intimate. And the fifteen years that have passed have made no change in our miraculous Nicholas. As I write, Senator LaFollette addresses the convention of the American Federation of Labor, and says: “A century and a half ago our forefathers shed their blood in order that they might establish on this continent a government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed, in which the will of the people, expressed through their duly elected representatives, should be sovereign.” And instantly our interlocking president rushes to the rescue. Before the convention of the New Jersey Bar Association he exclaims: “Our forefathers did nothing of the sort. They took good care to do something quite different.” And the Associated Press takes that and sends it all over the United States, and ninety-nine out of a hundred good Americans read it, and say, reverently: “A great university president says so; it must be true.” CHAPTER VIII THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS