A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University Professor Royce\'s Libel
_Gentlemen_,--Believing it to be a necessary part of good citizenship to defend one's reputation against unjustifiable attacks, and believing you to have been unwarrantably, but not remotely, implicated in an unjustifiable attack upon my own reputation by Assistant Professor Josiah Royce, since his attack is made publicly, explicitly, and emphatically on the authority of his "professional" position as one of your agents and appointees, I respectfully apply to you for redress of the wrong, leaving it wholly to your own wisdom and sense of justice to decide what form such redress should take. If Dr. Royce had not, by clear and undeniable implication, appealed to your high sanction to sustain him in his attack,--if he had not undeniably sought to create a widespread but false public impression that, in making this attack, he spoke, and had a right to speak, with all the prestige and authority of Harvard University itself,--I should not have deemed it either necessary or becoming to appeal to you in self-defence, or, indeed, to take any public notice whatever of an attack otherwise unworthy of it. But under the circumstances I am confident that you will at once recognize the inevitableness and unquestionable propriety of my appeal from the employee to the employer, from the agent to the principal; and it would be disrespectful to you to doubt for a moment that, disapproving of an
succession as the tears steal gently down his cheeks. He talks thus to
himself: 'I am mistaken. _Somebody does care_ for the drunkard. And if
somebody cares for me, _I ought to care for myself_.' Here reform first
commences. In a few days, when free, to some extent, from alcohol, he is
admitted to the freedom of the institution. As he enters the
reading-room, the library, the amusement, the gymnasium, dining-room and
spacious halls, the conviction becomes stronger and stronger that
somebody is interested in the inebriate, and he should be interested in
himself. Then comes the lessons of the superintendent. He is taught that
he cannot be reformed, but that he can reform himself. That God helps
those only who help themselves. That he must ignore all boon companions
of the cup as associates, all places where liquor is kept and sold,
that, in order to reform himself, he must become a reformer, labor for
the good of his brother; in short, he must shun every rivulet that leads
him into the stream of intemperance, and as a cap-stone which completes
the arch, that he must look to Him from whence cometh all grace and
power to help in time of need.
"As he converses with those that are strong in experience, listens to
the reading of the Holy Scriptures in the morning devotions, joins in
the sweet songs of Zion and unites in unison with his brother inmates in
saying the Lord's Prayer, as he hears the strong experiences in the
public meetings and secret associations of those who have remained firm
for one, two, three, and up to ten or fifteen years, little by little
his confidence is strengthened, and almost before he is aware, the firm
determination is formed and the resolve made, _I will drink no more_. As
_Gentlemen_,--Believing it to be a necessary part of good citizenship to defend one's reputation against unjustifiable attacks, and believing you to have been unwarrantably, but not remotely, implicated in an unjustifiable attack upon my own reputation by Assistant Professor Josiah Royce, since his attack is made publicly, explicitly, and emphatically on the authority of his "professional" position as one of your agents and appointees, I respectfully apply to you for redress of the wrong, leaving it wholly to your own wisdom and sense of justice to decide what form such redress should take. If Dr. Royce had not, by clear and undeniable implication, appealed to your high sanction to sustain him in his attack,--if he had not undeniably sought to create a widespread but false public impression that, in making this attack, he spoke, and had a right to speak, with all the prestige and authority of Harvard University itself,--I should not have deemed it either necessary or becoming to appeal to you in self-defence, or, indeed, to take any public notice whatever of an attack otherwise unworthy of it. But under the circumstances I am confident that you will at once recognize the inevitableness and unquestionable propriety of my appeal from the employee to the employer, from the agent to the principal; and it would be disrespectful to you to doubt for a moment that, disapproving of an