CHAPTER XII

PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS

"Especially in your country does it exert immense influence on the public mind."-POPE BENEDICT XV to his American interviewer.

THE front-page Person who sets out for America prepares for a stiffish ordeal, as one does who embarks for the Equator or the North Pole. But no vicarious hint, no experience at second hand, can make real the endless siege which a grand tour of the United States entails upon the distinguished visitor. Three royal names occur to me in this connection: Prince Henry of Prussia, Prince Louis of Battenburg, and the Duke of Abruzzi. It is safe to say these sailors will never forget New York, with night and day assaults upon their peace and patience, which baffled every known strategy. The stay of each of these was an orgiastic whirl not to be conceived by the European; an epos of stormy joy beyond the power of sober words. Those bulky mail-sacks, with epistles from soulful girls-and queer abuse from anarchist dives in the Black Belt of Chicago! Specimens of cigars and ties that sought a swell christening were sent along for the Lord High Admiral's blessing. So was the SemiReady suit, which was none the less "personal as a billetdoux; tailored entirely by hand, with intimate touches and endearments of individual effort in each hidden stitch and high-caste line."

There was a time when cynical and scandalous comment in the press drove prominent Americans abroad and kept them there. The ablest men were barred from a political

career through fear of the newspapers. The Trust magnate saw his career dissected with frigid scorn; his 'cute lawhonesty and stock-watering; his Borgian virtù, and the glorious villainies which had marked his rise to greatness. At no time could the reporter be evaded.. Nor was he to be suppressed or censored, as the Government itself has lately found, and therewith bowed to a puffing humour which "put it over" on George Washington himself in the long ago. One day the Liberator attended a Council with a copy of the National Gazette, a lewd and daring sheet edited by Philip Freneau, who held a clerkship in the State Department under Jefferson. "That rascal,' said Washington to his colleagues, "has been sending me three copies of his paper every day, as if he thought I would become the distributor of them." He probably did-especially as the Father of his Country was vilely abused in that day's issue! Freneau's paper died an appropriate death in the yellow fever outbreak of Philadelphia in 1793.

You cannot awe the American scribe. He pursues the biggest game with a child-like trust in the due and license which have never failed him; we saw these conceded in the first two years of war, when "big things" rained upon the American press until the veterans were sated. The New Yorker chatted informally with kings, as none other could do. Foreign Offices received him gladly, from the Quai d'Orsay to the mysterious Bab-i-Ali above the Golden Horn. Chancellors and Ministers gave exclusive stories to the Yankee, leaving the native scribe to pout with a sense of slight and chagrin. But New York was in no way elated, accepting each prize as a matter of course. In Berlin old Zeppelin was interviewed upon the aerial raids. Von Tirpitz was America's authority for the submarine exploits; at home Edison was asked about electric cures for all the curses of a chemical war.

It was to a Hearst man that the Crown Prince wept over the havoc and slaughter he had seen. At the Sublime Porte the Grand Vizier shook his hoary head over Venizelos; and complained about the Sherif of Mecca who hid the treasure of the Holy Places-a tidy sum, and one sorely needed by the Porte in a hungry time. America was bombarded with the sayings and sentiments of august Persons who had never previously spoken for publication. Newspaper envoys flitted back and forth in Europe with a naïve thirst for knowledge. As it happened, all the belligerents were anxious to humour him; so from end to end the firmament of war fairly blazed with American stars, tackling jobs which in 1914 were not even office dreams, but mere pia desideria too silly for editorial thought.

But of all the stunts, all the resounding scoops (how the English language limps behind them!) none quite equals that twenty minutes which the World man had with the Pope "in his magnificent private library on the second floor of the Vatican": there a Maestro di Camera translated, as the Keeper of the Keys delivered his prayer and plea-"that this terrible carnage with its attendant horrors and misery may soon cease.' That famous interview gave rise to caustic comment abroad. The Papal Secretary of State tried to explain "misunderstandings"; the Austrian prelate who arranged the audience was censured and dismissed. Certain it is that the Vatican was embarrassed by this Park Row feat. Dom Gasquet, the Benedictine historian, found the Pope depressed over the affair and no doubt prejudiced against American reporters. But how came this New York Worldling to glide by the noble guards and arch-priests, the purple monsignori and princes of the Curia, who fence the Sovereign Pontiff from the passing show? There was a precedent, it seems, and the World man played it well. Leo XIII (the American urged) had received Jim Creelman at

no fateful time; so Pope Benedict might well speak to a hunded million neutrals through thirty thousand newspapers, all the way from Tallahassee to Spokane. Now what were the war-aims and views of the Holy Father?

To say that America believes in publicity is to state a fact too feebly. Publicity is America's blood and breath. The President is bound by it; a President's coffin cannot escape it. I have before me a page advertisement of the Springfield Metallic Casket, which at Canton, O., keeps the remains of Mr. and Mrs. McKinley "from the violation of the earth." Never before have I seen coffins flaunted in seventy-five styles, with hardware to match, and "burglar-proof vaults," which are surely peculiar to America. You will find all about them in a lavish catalogue called "The Final Tribute," which shows the funeral pomp of all mankind, from that of a Kansas Senator to the hairy Ainu of Yezo. This macabre business may be in doubtful taste, but it is gleefully characteristic. Down in Birmingham, Ala., I was handed an undertaker's card with the gay-grim legend: "I'll get you yet!" On the other side was this consolation: "But you'll have all the attention you'd expect from a friend."

This matter of publicity, I must own, appals me at the outset. The gleam of Liberty's torch, high over Bedloe's Island, is somewhat dimmed, when I reflect that a newspaper lit it, with the aid of Henry Doherty and the Society for Electrical Development. A great city like Baltimore takes space in the magazines beside the breakfast cereal and the safety razor. And the text tells you why. "Ask Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem Works, who is spending $50,000,000 here to establish the largest steel plant on the Atlantic seaboard." A smaller town like Kenosha, Wis., makes a most modest bid for your plant and personal energy. "She offers low freights, lake transport, intelligent labour, and cheap electric

power." All over the continent statesmen and society leaders have their own halo-polishers in the press. A Presidential election is the most colossal task of all for the publicity expert. He has a cabinet of movie-men, an army of orators in a dozen tongues, including Magyar, Yiddish, and Greek.

He partly edits ten thousand papers by means of extra matter supplied in plate, and matrix, and proof. He inspires a corps of cartoonists day by day, till the whirlwind finish rings out a blast of challenge from the rival camps. Then it is that the best writers open fire with pile-driving boosts for either candidate. No wonder the Campaign Headquarters is like a great post office gone mad. The Boss of all is now firing sal voes with a range of three thousand miles; his target is nine million votes, scattered from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. America revels in the strife which Success entails; the Edison formula for it is "two per cent. inspiration, and ninety-eight per cent. perspiration." Repose seems to mean stagnation in this vivid land. One must do and drive, if one is to rank among the live wires of business; how many American figures of speech are drawn from electricity, railroads, and mechanics?

The same qualities are looked for in the man as in the car-power and pep, pick-up and snap"; I quote from an advertisement before me. "Life is too good to waste," the American gloats-and wastes himself in the using of it. "If I can't make sixty-one minutes to the hour, it won't be for want of trying!" It must be that extra minute which the foreign visitor finds so wearing-even the militant suffrage lady who never knew defeat before. Poor Mrs. Pankhurst, hunted by reporters, hid from them on the dock near the outward bound Saxonia, and went on board at the last moment only to find the pressmen