STEP by step The Guardian followed the war through its pregnant early
days. In presentation of the news, both Jeremy and Galpin strove to be
conscientiously neutral. For Galpin, this was simple enough. It accorded
with his creed, that the news should stand of itself and for itself and
let the people judge. Jeremy took it harder. There were times when,
in the security of his den, he fingered his pencil with a fierce and
mounting resentment which cried for expression toward Germany’s savagery
and terrorism. On the other hand, he knew that to incite prejudices,
wrath, and hatred within America, and particularly within so divided a
State as his own, was to thrust the nation nearer to that hell’s caldron
wherein Europe agonized. The President had prescribed neutrality. That,
Jeremy recognized, was the part of statesmanship. He appeased his
own soul with the argument that it was equally the part of honorable
journalism.
If he had thought by editorial silence to satisfy or even conciliate the
propagandists of Deutschtum in the State, he was soon undeceived. The
process of the absorption of Centralia by the German-Americans was
swiftly progressing, and as a newspaper of influence, The Guardian came
within the purview of their programme. Daily the mail deposited upon his
desk a swelling flood of proselytizing literature; pamphlets, reprints,
letters to the editor from writers whom he had never heard of (and
who in many cases had no existence) as well as from his own clientèle,
excerpts from the German press, editorials from that great and malign
force in American journalism who, already secretly plotting with
Germany, was playing the game of Teutonic diplomacy by inciting fear and
distrust of Japan and shouting for war upon and annexation of Mexico. He
could not have published one twentieth of them. He did not publish one
one-hundredth of them. Hardly a day passed without his being stopped
on the street by some sorrowful or accusing or indignant subscriber
who wished to know why The Guardian had not reproduced Pastor Klink’s
powerful editorial on “The Crusader Spirit of Germany,” or how it
happened that The Record printed Mr. Woeker’s letter on Belgian
provocations while The Guardian had n’t a word of it. Suspicion
established itself in the editor’s mind that some person or persons were
making daily and scientific analysis of his newspaper for the purpose
of forcing propaganda upon it by the power of protest. He suspected, and
with reason, the Deutscher Club.
The matter of news soon became an irritant to the apostles of
Deutschtum. To the layman, news is simple fact, the product of the
world’s activities, finished and ready for the press. To the expert
journalist news is a theme and the printed page his instrument whereon
he may render that theme by an infinite variety of inflections and with
infinitely varying effect upon his public. Headlines and sub-heads alone
may vitally alter the whole purport of an article not otherwise garbled.
So long as Germany’s record was one of consistent victories, the course
of the Centralia newspapers was clearly marked. They had but to print
the cables with captions appropriate to the facts, in order to please
their self-appointed masters, the German-American public. But Russia
now made her sensational advance. Victory in the West was threatened by
disaster in the East. Much ingenious and painful juggling of cable news
was imposed upon the harassed journalistic fraternity of Centralia by
this unfortunate development. Relegating the Russian campaign to nooks
and corners of the inner pages and qualifying it by indeterminate or
sometimes satiric headlines, was the most generally approved method. The
Guardian, however, printed the news. It printed it straight, for what it
was worth, and under appropriate captions. Somewhat to Jeremy’s surprise
and more to his relief, the Governor had no criticism to make of this
course.
“So long as you stick to facts, we’ve got a good defense,” was his view.
“They’ll kick. Of course they’ll kick. Let ’em. In time they’ll come
to see that they’re really kicking against the facts, not against The
Guardian. Just now our German friends are pretty excited and touchy and
nervous. If you could give ’em a little more show on the editorial
page, while this Russian business is on, it’d help.”
Kick the German-Americans certainly did, by pen and Voice. No less a
person than Robert Wanser, who had maintained a mere bowing acquaintance
with Jeremy since the Cultural Language Bill episode, took it upon
himself to voice a protest to General Manager Galpin.
“Why print this Russian claptrap at all?” he asked.
“All the papers are carrying it,” answered Galpin.
“Not so much of it, and not so prominently as The Guardian.”
“We’re giving it what it’s worth as news, just as we give the German
advances in the West.”
“Everybody knows that it isn’t news. It is British fabrications, put on
the tables to fool--er--influenceable newspapers.”
“Influenceable, eh?” said Galpin, annoyed. “Everybody knows, do they?
You prove it to us, and we’ll print it, all right.”
“You are making a mistake,” pronounced the banker severely. “For a
newspaper to take up the British side is very suspicious.”
“Bunk! The Guardian’s been square, and you know it. But we’re not going
to stand for being censored by a lot of organized letter-writers.”
“A(c)h, censored!” The banker’s guttural almost emerged upon the
troubled surface of speech. “The censoring is inside your editorial
office, if anywhere. You refuse to publish our letters--”
“‘Our’? Have you been writing us letters?”
“I have sent you letters.” Mr. Wanser’s face became red.
“Funny! I don’t recall any. Sign ’em?”
“They were signed,” returned the other, with an effort at loftiness.
“With what name?” demanded Galpin bluntly.
“I am not here to be cross-examined by you.”
“You started this. And now you want to duck it. Nothing doing! You let
out what we’ve suspected; that a lot of those letters are machine-made,
and sent in signed with fake names or with real names stuck on as a
blind for some committee. That don’t go, in The Guardian. We’ve had too
much stuff put over on us.”
The banker’s dignity dissolved in wrath. “Don’t you get fresh with me,
young man. I guess you and your boss, too, are going to learn something
one of these days! Going out of your way to insult the best citizens in
the State every time your dirty, pro-English paper--”
“Oh, you make me sick!” said Galpin, and marched away, leaving Wanser
brandishing a denunciatory fist at nothing.
The split between the Germans and The Guardian imperceptibly widened, as
time went on, through minor incidents, arguments, and abortive attempts
at influence. Seizing upon its opportunity, The Record accepted the
whole programme of local German censorship, published nothing that could
possibly offend, trimmed its news to the prejudices of the dominant
element, and by these methods cut in upon its rival’s local circulation.
Verrall, however, reported that as yet there was nothing to worry about,
while at the same time earnestly advocating an inoffensive foreign news
policy for The Guardian. So 1914 passed into 1915, and the paper held
its own.
On a mid-April day of 1915 there appeared upon an inner page of The
Guardian, an item of such overwhelming importance, that when the editor
and owner read it, all other news of the day receded and blurred into a
dull, colorless mist of insignificance. The article stated briefly that
Miss Marcia Ames, cousin of Miss Letitia Pritchard, of 11 Montgomery
Street, who was well known to Fenchester society, not only for her
charm and beauty, but also as being the only lady intercollegiate
golf-player in the country, had left Berne, whither she had gone after
the breaking-out of the war, and was visiting friends in Copenhagen.
Her many and admiring friends would be glad to learn, etc., etc., in
the best society-reportorial formula. After thoroughly absorbing that
paragraph into his inmost being, Jeremy sent for Buddy Higman, who had
now taken on the additional duty of marking each day’s paper, from the
assignment book, article by article, with the name of the writer of
each.
“Buddy,” said the editor, “whose is the Ames story?”
This being an official query, Buddy made pretense of consulting his
marked file. “Higman, sir.”
“Oh! You wrote it? Did you have a letter?”
“Yes, sir. But I did n’t write it from that. I would n’t make a story
out of a letter from Her. That’s personal,” said Buddy, proud in his
rigid sense of ethics.
“Then where did you get it?”
“I figured that like as not Miss Pritchard would get one by the same
mail. So I went an’ ast her.”
“And she had?”
“Yes, sir. I told her I was there for The Guardian an’ was there
anything she could give out. An’ she gimme the story.”
“Buddy, if you don’t look out you’re going to be a real newspaper man
one of these days!”
“I wisht I was one now,” returned the boy wistfully. “Do you? What would
you do?”
“I dunno, exactly. Somethin’.”
“You’d need a more definite policy than that, son, if you were in the
bad fix of owning a newspaper.”
“I’d do somethin’,” persisted the boy. “I’d soak the Germans. Say, Boss,
how old do you have to be to get into the National Guard?”
“A good deal older than you are. Why all this martial ardor, Buddy?”
“That’s what She’d do, if She was a man.”
“Did the letter say so?”
“Yes. Can a feller--is it ever all right for a feller to show a lady’s
letter?”
Wondering again as he had wondered before whence this freckled scrub of
a boy had derived his instincts of the gentleman born and bred, Jeremy
answered gravely: “It might be. That’s for you to decide, Buddy.”
“I kinda guess She’d like for you to see this.” He dug out of his pocket
a crumpled sheet, covered with the strong, straight, beautiful script of
Marcia. “Read there, Boss.” He indicated an inner page.
“...or later it must come,” the letter ran. “As soon as you are old
enough you must learn to be a soldier. Every one in the world who can,
must learn to be a soldier. I cannot tell you, Buddy, of the terrible
thing that German national ambition is; how it reaches out into every
nation to make that nation its tool; how it aims to overrun the world
and make it one vast Germany. You will be old enough soon to see what
it is doing in your own little city, so far away. Perhaps you do not
comprehend. Perhaps you will not understand even what I am writing; but
you may find some one on your paper who will know and will explain.”
“I think, perhaps, I was meant to see this, Buddy,” interjected Jeremy.
“But I guess I know what She was drivin’ at all right,” replied the boy.
“How can America be so blind!” Jeremy read on. “How can its newspapers
be so blind! The last numbers of The Guardian that I saw, no word of
arousing the people to a sense of what all this means. Oh, Buddy, Buddy!
If you were only a man and had a newspaper of your own! I have written
your aunt about the books and...”
The bottom of the page terminated the reading. Jeremy, with his lips
set straight and hard, handed back the sheet. The boy faced him with a
candid eye.
“Boss, you’re a man,” he said.
“Am I?” said Jeremy, more to himself than in reply. “And you got a
noospaper of your own.”
“Not of my own, wholly.”
“Ain’t it?” cried Buddy, amazed. “Who’s in on it?”
“The people who read it, and believe in it. It’s partly theirs. The men
I work with to help keep politics straight and fair. I have to think of
them.”
Buddy sighed. “It ain’t as big a cinch as it looks, ownin’ a paper, is
it!”
“Not these days, son.”
“Anyway, I guess She knows,” asseverated the stout little loyalist.
“She’s lived there an’ she oughta know. What She says goes, with me.”
The clear single-mindedness of a boy! How the editor of The Guardian,
feeling a thousand years old, envied his lowliest assistant! How the
unstilled ache for Marcia woke and throbbed again at her words! She had
begged him not wholly to forget her. Had it been a spell laid upon him
it could have been no more compelling. He wondered whether, twenty years
hence, her influence would have become less vital, less intimate upon
him, and, wondering, knew that it would not.
He went home deviously by way of Montgomery Street. The early shoots
had lanced their way into the sunshine of the Pritchard garden, and Miss
Letitia was making her rounds, inspecting for the winter-killed amongst
the tenderer of her shrubbery. Jeremy leaned upon the fence saying
nothing. There were reasons why he felt hesitant about approaching Miss
Pritchard. In his campaign against the tax-dodgers he had fallen foul of
old Madam Taylor, one of her particular friends.
Shortly after the publication, Miss Pritchard, meeting Jeremy at her own
front gate as he was about to enter, had presented the danger signal of
two high-colored spots upon the cheek-curves, and a pair of specially
bright eyes; also the theorem, for his acceptance, that a newspaper
ought to be in better business than attacking and abusing lone and
defenseless women. Declining to accept this theorem without debate,
Jeremy was informed that Miss Pritchard would disdain thenceforth to
harbor The Guardian upon her premises. Interpreting this to mean that
the editor of that fallen sheet would be equally unwelcome, the caller
had departed, divided between wrath and melancholy. Up to that time the
Pritchard house had been one of the few ports of call in his busy but
rather lonely life. Now, another of those gossamer links with Marcia
Ames was severed. Miss Pritchard soon came to regret her severity, too;
for the steadfast, unspoken, hopeless devotion of the boy--he was still
only that to her--to the memory of her golden girl, had bloomed for her
like one of the flowers in her old maid’s garden.
Now, seeing the lover, forlorn and mute, outside what was once his
paradise, she gave way to compunction. But not wholly. There was a sting
in her first words.
“Are you reckoning up taxes on my place, Mr. Jeremy?”
“That’s been done long ago,” he said uncompromisingly.
“When are you going to print it?”
“As soon as you try to dodge ’em.”
He looked very tired, and his voice had lost something of the buoyant
quality of youth which she had always associated with him. A different
note crept into her own when she spoke again.
“I had a long letter from Marcia to-day.”
“Is she well?” The tone was politely formal, but she saw the color rise
in his face and marked the pathetic eagerness in his eyes.
“She’s the same Marcia Ames. Even to the name.”
He caught at the opportunity. “She’s not married yet?”
“No. Her fiancé is fighting. Somewhere in the remote colonies, I
believe.”
“Fiancé?”
“Surely you knew that she was engaged; a young cousin of her
stepfather’s. It was an affair of years.”
“Not when she was here,” Jeremy blurted.
Her surprised regard challenged him. “You seem very certain,” she
observed.
Jeremy recovered himself. “I had heard rumors, but nothing formal,” he
said. “I thought perhaps you would have told me when it was announced.”
“I assumed that you knew.”
What Miss Pritchard meant was, “I assumed that she would have told you.”
She perceived that there were depths in this affair of which she knew
little or nothing.
“German betrothals are curious and formal things in her class,”
continued the old maid. “When she came here, to ‘see America first,’
I believe it was understood that nothing was to be settled until
her return. She went back, and the formalities were arranged. At the
outbreak of war her fiancé was somewhere in Africa and, I believe, is
still there.”
“I see,” said Jeremy dully.
“Marcia still sees The Guardian.” The spirit of romance in the spinster
heart _would_ force the words.
“I know. And that helps. Good-bye and thank you.”
“Come to see me and let’s be friends again,” said the warm-hearted lady.
Most of that night Jeremy spent on the tramp, thinking of The Guardian
in terms of Marcia’s letter; haggardly struggling to harmonize
cross-interests, cross-purposes, cross-loyalties. Out of the struggle
emerged one clear resolve. What next the progress of the war should
produce that intimately touched his conscience, should be the signal,
the release. Upon that The Guardian should speak its owner’s mind though
damnation follow.
*****
Three weeks later the Lusitania was sunk.