Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [250]
His nerves agitated, Pulitzer remained apprehensive. “Never was the time more propitious than now to treat judges and courts and all forms of justice with respect,” he instructed his editors. He had cause to be anxious. Even after issuing its indictments, the grand jury in New York continued its probe. Hosmer was called to testify, and he sent Pulitzer a long description of his ordeal in the closed chambers. Unaware of how Stimson had stood up to Roosevelt, Hosmer insultingly compared Stimson to Lepidus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, described by Mark Antony as “a slight unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands.”
Over time, it became clear that neither the case in Washington nor the one in New York had much traction. “Panama matter at this end apparently making no progress,” reported one of Pulitzer’s men in New York. Roosevelt was now in Africa chasing big game, and Stimson had returned to private law practice and was rumored to be planning to run for higher office. The matter fell into the hands of President Taft’s appointees, who dutifully pressed on, out of loyalty to the man who had picked their boss for the presidency. With no prospect of any trials soon, Pulitzer was granted permission to leave the country.
Clearing Sandy Point, the Liberty went south, as usual. During breakfast, off the coast of southern Virginia, Pulitzer asked the captain which way the yacht was heading that morning.
“Due east, sir,” he replied.
“If we keep on ‘due east,’ where will we fetch up?” asked Pulitzer.
“Lisbon, sir.”
“Keep on, due east.”
It was a bad decision. The crossing took them into a severe spring gale, followed by long days of heavy swells. By the time the group reached Lisbon, they were sick and exhausted, and Pulitzer had whooping cough. Life on board worsened. A new secretary who had joined the bedraggled group came down with smallpox. The yacht had to be fumigated and everyone vaccinated before authorities allowed the Liberty to move on. The voyage was hardly an escape from Pulitzer’s persecution back home.
Pulitzer spent the summer and fall of 1909 on the Liberty cruising from northern Europe to the area around Gibraltar, with short stays in port cities and one in Carlsbad for another cure. Back in the United States, the legal proceedings against him and his newspaper ground on. The government prepared to prove the articles untrue by tapping into its huge archive of documents relating to the acquisition of the canal and even deposing all the members of the junta in Panama.
Although they felt they had the upper hand when it came to the law, Pulitzer’s lawyers took no chances. They dispatched their own investigators to Washington, Paris, and Panama to uncover proof confirming charges of corruption involving the canal. If they succeeded, not only would they have an irrefutable defense, but the World would have the scoop of the century. This undertaking, however, became increasingly expensive when Pulitzer’s lawyers decided to use rogatory commissions that would permit the taking of testimony usable in a U.S. court. The Justice Department insisted that Pulitzer pay the travel and lodging costs of its attorneys who had to witness the hearings.
Each side believed its foreign research benefited its case. From Paris, McNamara wrote to George W. Wickersham, Taft’s attorney general, that “the witnesses who had testified have not only not substantiated in the smallest degree the contentions of the World, but have rejected their allegations in toto and have established more thoroughly the utter falsity of the libels.” On the other hand, the World’s reporter Earl Harding, who accompanied the lawyers to Paris, was convinced that a ledger he obtained showed the collusion of American investors in acquiring French canal stock to benefit from the U.S. payment.
Harding was among