Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [244]
Yet Pulitzer did not choose to escape blame entirely. He said that the paper was his and he took general responsibility for its continual attacks on Roosevelt and the president’s policies. “I am really sorry he should be so very angry but the World will continue to criticize him without a shadow of fear even if he should succeed in compelling me to edit the paper from jail.”
Aid came from a surprising quarter. In Lincoln, Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan published a defense of Pulitzer in his newspaper, the Commoner. “Mr. Pulitzer is on solid ground when he resists the President’s attempt to convert newspaper criticism of officials into criticism against the government itself,” said Bryan. “The President’s message is indefensible in so far as it asserts the right of the government to prosecute the World or Mr. Pulitzer.”
Pulitzer believed prison was a real possibility, and he said so to his friends, though he put on a brave face. “We are treating the thing with some hilarity,” he wrote to one friend a few hours after Roosevelt’s intentions became known. “I think it simply an effort to shut up the paper’s criticism just as Congress and Senate have been shut up.” Still, Pulitzer wanted to escape New York as soon as he could. But as the object of a possible government prosecution, he couldn’t make a move without checking with the U.S. attorney. The next day, Pulitzer sent Seitz to see Stimson.
“How long will Mr. Pulitzer be away?” Stimson asked Seitz.
“A few days,” he replied.
“I will not need Mr. Pulitzer for a few days,” Stimson said ominously, concluding the conversation.
On December 16, 1908, as the Liberty sailed out of New York harbor, Pulitzer’s editorial appeared in the World. Greatly massaged by Cobb, and improved by research, it was an eloquent defense of the newspaper and the rights of the press. “Mr. Roosevelt is mistaken. He cannot muzzle the World,” the editorial began. It urged Congress to investigate the transactions involving the Panama Canal and cheekily said that the World felt complimented by the president’s prosecution.
“This is the first time a President ever asserted the doctrine of lèse-majesté, or proposed, in the absence of specific legislation, the criminal prosecution by the Government of citizens who criticized the conduct of the Government or the conduct of individuals who may have had business dealings with the Government.” Neither the king of England nor the German emperor, the editorial noted, had such power. “Yet Mr. Roosevelt, in the absence of law, officially proposes to use all the power of the greatest government on earth to cripple the freedom of the press on the pretext that the Government itself has been libeled—and he is the Government.
“So far as the World is concerned, its proprietor may go to jail, if Mr. Roosevelt succeeds, as he threatens; but even in jail the World will not cease to be a fearless champion of free speech, a free press and a free people. It cannot be muzzled.”
The Liberty’s southerly course prompted unfounded rumors that Pulitzer was on his way to Panama to obtain vindicating evidence. A blind publisher was hardly the person to conduct the necessary research. From Norfolk, Virginia, where the Liberty paused briefly, Pulitzer ordered a reporter for the World in England to leave for Paris and “dig twelve hours a day on who really got the money” he also told Seitz to hire Wall Street investigators to conduct a similar investigation on this side of the Atlantic. All the work had to be coordinated by one editor, said Pulitzer. “Tell him to be scrupulously careful weighing every word,” he said, repeating his old refrain. “But accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.”
Summoned, Cobb raced by train to meet the yacht at Old Point Comfort at Norfolk. On board he found a highly disquieted Pulitzer, worried about the possibility of prison but still capable