AN EDITOR'S TROUBLES
r —» , PARTISANS HARD TO PLEASE. The editor of the New York "Evening Post" is apparently a little sorry for himself, and in the following dissertation he- tells some of the reasons why he does not find it easy to satisfy-,both sides with his neutrality: "Maggie Tulliver's father, it will be remembered, was a taciturn and almost inarticulate man; On one occasion, however, he ventured to use with his wife a bold figure of speech. • She had made a captious objection to a certain plan of his, whereupon he said: 'You always would turn away a good wagoner just because he had a mole on hia face.' Instantly the literal-minded and loquacious Mrs. Tulliver overwhelmed him. When had she ever done suoh a thing P They had never, in fact, had si wagoner with a niole on his face, and if they had, she was not the woman to mind it, so what did he mean by saying such a thing?' Disconcerted Mr. Silliver could only scratoh his' head and remark, hopelessly, 'Talking is puzzling work.' 'Anyhow, newspaper-writing is. This truth has never been so impressed upon us as during the past few weeks. The war appears to have wrought this evil, among vastly greater ones, that it ias stirred into activity a vast number of irritable people who are at' the same time exceedingly matter' of fact: A flower of rhetorio,, a good-natured allusion, a, playful exaggeration serve but as so many red Tags to them, and they tush upon you with furious demands for an ■ explanation. It is this kind of person who floods an editor's mail with letterSj full of amazement or pain or indignation at something or other he has said. Has he uttered a word in praise of German military skill and bravery? Then he is a,traitor to the Anglo-Saxon race. Has he referred to the tragio but inevitable fate of the Emdcn? Then he,is 'gloating' over a disaster to 'heroic men. To such people as we refer to there is no such thing as seking to hold the scales even, tio modus ill rebus. A newspaper, to them, is either thoroughly pro-German, or else is ferociously m lay mi r of the English. And they lie in wait to catch-every manifestation of its Sympathies, one way _or the other, and pounce upon it with a triumphant: 'Aha, this shows which side has bought you!'" _ One of this editor's faux pas was to. liken a certain German romanticism to characteristics "we are in the habit of ottributing to the. happy-go-lucky Celt." Whereupon a very angry Irishman addressed that editor with this splendid burst:—"lf it.were simply a case of the pot calling the kettle black, we might have no complaint. It is not such a case. It is simply on© of vice stigmatising ; of tyranny and 1 oppression ridiouling principle: of larceny condemning honesty; of falsehood trampling truth under foot; of intrigue ft™ duplicity holding their headi aloft, Whilst simplicity and manhood are dethroned. No wonder tho Irishman loves justice 1" (
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Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2353, 8 January 1915, Page 7
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507AN EDITOR'S TROUBLES Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2353, 8 January 1915, Page 7
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