American journalism has its moments of fantastic hysteria, and when it is on the rampage the only thing for a rational man to do is to climb a tree and let the cataclysm go by.  And so, some time ago, when the word nature-faker was coined, I, for one, climbed into my tree and stayed there.  I happened to be in Hawaii at the time, and a Honolulu reporter elicited the sentiment from me that I thanked God I was not an authority on anything.  This sentiment was promptly cabled to America in an Associated Press despatch, whereupon the American press (possibly annoyed because I had not climbed down out of my tree) charged me with paying for advertising by cable at a dollar per word—­the very human way of the American press, which, when a man refuses to come down and be licked, makes faces at him.

But now that the storm is over, let us come and reason together.  I have been guilty of writing two animal-stories—­two books about dogs.  The writing of these two stories, on my part, was in truth a protest against the “humanizing” of animals, of which it seemed to me several “animal writers” had been profoundly guilty.  Time and again, and many times, in my narratives, I wrote, speaking of my dog-heroes:  “He did not think these things; he merely did them,” etc.  And I did this repeatedly, to the clogging of my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; and I did it in order to hammer into the average human understanding that these dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation, and emotion, and by simple reasoning.  Also, I endeavoured to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution; I hewed them to the mark set by scientific research, and awoke, one day, to find myself bundled neck and crop into the camp of the nature-fakers.

President Roosevelt was responsible for this, and he tried to condemn me on two counts. (1) I was guilty of having a big, fighting bull-dog whip a wolf-dog. (2) I was guilty of allowing a lynx to kill a wolf-dog in a pitched battle.  Regarding the second count, President Roosevelt was wrong in his field observations taken while reading my book.  He must have read it hastily, for in my story I had the wolf-dog kill the lynx.  Not only did I have my wolf-dog kill the lynx, but I made him eat the body of the lynx as well.  Remains only the first count on which to convict me of nature-faking, and the first count does not charge me with diverging from ascertained facts.  It is merely a statement of a difference of opinion.  President Roosevelt does not think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog.  I think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog.  And there we are.  Difference of opinion may make, and does make, horse-racing.  I can understand that difference of opinion can make dog-fighting.  But what gets me is how difference of opinion regarding the relative fighting merits of a bull-dog and a wolf-dog makes me a nature-faker and President Roosevelt a vindicated and triumphant scientist.