I have made it my practice to use most careful courtesy in dealing with my enemies, so as to put them in the wrong. I dutifully rehearsed to the regents my qualifications as a university orator, after which the board proceeded to question me, the two active questioners being Mr. Butler, the railroad attorney, and Dr. Seaman, the reactionary candidate for governor. The latter wanted to know if I had been correctly quoted in the newspaper interview, in which I had charged that President Birge “had been influenced by money” in his decision against me.
Pardon me if I go into details on this point. We have seen several university professors being cross-questioned by boards of regents, and it will be worth while for us to have exact knowledge of how these inquisitions are conducted. You would have thought that Dr. Seaman, being a man prominent in public life, would have taken the trouble to provide himself with a copy of the interview about which he intended to cross-question me; but he had not done so, and I, as it happens, do not go about with copies of my newspaper interviews in my pocket. I was embarrassed by Dr. Seaman’s question, and could only explain that I had no recollection of having made any such statement about President Birge, and that certainly I could have no such idea about him. Newspaper reports were frequently inaccurate. What I had intended to say and should have said was that in his decision concerning me President Birge had “acted in the interest of special privilege.” Later, when I went out from the board, and got a copy of the interview, I discovered that this is exactly what I was reported to have said, and that Dr. Seaman had been misquoting me in a public session of the board, with half a dozen newspaper reporters diligently taking notes!
President Birge arose and asked on what ground I could have made such a statement about him. My answer was that he had shown his attitude of sympathy with special privilege by many things he had said in our long interview; also he had shown a very strong prejudice against the enemies of special privilege.
I answered: “If I were a person disposed to take personal offense, I would have considered myself outraged by the remark you made to me, that without having read any of my books you had come to the conclusion that I was a person ‘accustomed to pep up and exaggerate his statements in order to create a sensation and to increase the sale of his books.’” (I loathe the expression “pep up,” and beg the reader to understand that I am quoting a university president.)