able grounds of another kind must be found, such as will divert the popular imagination from the point at issue. By a judicious course of vexation and equivocations, an obnoxious scientist may be manœuvred into such a position that his pride will force a "voluntary" resignation. Failing this, it may become necessary, however distasteful, delicately to defame his domestic life, or his racial, religious or political status. In America such an appeal to the baser sentiments will commonly cloud the issue sufficiently for the purpose in hand, even though it all has nothing to do with the man's fitness for university work. Such a step, however, is not to be taken unless the case is urgent; if there is danger of estranging the affections of potential donors, or if it involves anything like overt disloyalty to the executive head.
This is one of the points at which it is necessary to recall the fact that no settled code of business ethics has yet been worked out for the guidance of competitive university management; nor is it easy to see how such a code can be worked out, so long as the university remains ostensibly a seat of learning, unable to avow any other ground of action than a singleminded pursuit of knowledge. It has been alleged — indeed it is fast becoming a tradition — that the executives of the great competitive universities habitually allow some peculiar latitude as touches the canons of truth and fair dealing. If this describes the facts, it should not be counted against these discreet men who so have to tax their ingenuity, but against the situation in which they are placed, which makes it impracticable to observe a nice discrimination in matters of veracity. Statements of fact, under such conditions, will in great part be controlled by the end to be accomplished, rather than by antecedent circumstances; such statements are necessarily of a teleological order.
