The Portland daily press., 1898-03-05
rsrrc1A1 20 THE pREss.I

TgPECIAL 70 THE PREss.I
Washington, March 4-Since the recent
excitement has arisen over the relations
of this country with the Spanish the at
tention of the administration and of the
Congress has been attracted forcibly to
the recklessness and unfortunate in
fuences of the so-called yellow journal
ISM in this country. The speech made
at the Yale alumni dinner in this city
this week by Mr.. Dalzell, Congressman
from Pennsylvania, has echoed the pre-
vailing conservative feeling of public men
in the Capital on the subject of the dan
gerous and unpatriotic influence Of tho
sensationalism now so rampant. During
all the excitement over the disaster to the
Maine, when above all things 1t has be-
hooved the nation to take dignified and
careful attitude, these papers have been
infiaming the popular mind with all sorts
of false stories of what has been going on
Havana and at the Capital. The SEQ
rotary of the Navy, public man OF long
experience and unquestioned Integrity
and ability, has found himself in the
hampered by the irresponsible agitations
of certain journals in New York and
other places than by the difficulties i'm
posed upon him by the trying crisis in
his own department.. He has had at his
| command the best and indeed the only
| facilities for ascertaining exactly what
| occurred in the harbor of Havana. Yet ne
| has sat daily in his office without being
| IL ft,y at11rp If
what caused the disaster to the Maine,
and mas seen large portion of the Amer
| loan people make up their minds that the
Maine was surely blown up by the Span
iards because certain papers have asserted
that a torpedo, mine, an Internal
| ism was placed under the starboard or the
port side of the battleship, at place
nerfectly we'll known and described by the
sensational papers, and often accurately
| illustrated by photograph taken under
water or in the mud by artists who have
| for the occasion invented processes hither-
to unknown to the art of the photog
ranher. The exhibition of KNOWN gness
which these papers have made would have
been highly amusing to the Secretary and
| his associates in the Cabinet of the Presi-
| dent had not the occasion been SO tragic
| and the performances so dangerous and
unfortunate. The congressman have also
/
ME who think that they know all about
| the disaster because they have read the
| faxed dispatches from Key West, and
| have seen the pictures made in New York
| from imagination by artists who have
never seen the harbor OF Havana or the
wreck of the Maine are writing to Con-
gress that there must be war at once, and
that any public man who does not in
stantly fall in with this view is either
noltroon or in the pay of Spain. One
newspaper has had the reckless effrontery
to denand that some members OF the
cabinet, and the Secretary of the Navy
among the first, shall be impeached by
Congress.
This week the batteries of misinforma-
ton have been turned upon Mr.. Boutelle,
of Maine, chairman of the House comlnit-
fee on Naval Affairs, because he has not
done at once what the sensational journals
demanded, instead Of consulting his own
| Judgment and his own sense OF duty. MT.
RoutelIe knows something about war and
| about war vessels He has commanded
| an arJnor clad in war, and has been an
executive officer on war vessel in one OF
the most memorable naval battles in
| American waters. He is familiar with
the new as we'll as with the old vessels of
our navy, and is presumed to have some
| KNOWLEDGE of the duties which are in
cumbent on him in the important position
which he holds. Yet the yellow jour-
nails, have discovered that he is the
friend of Spain, that he means that his
own country shall not be properly pre-
pared for the war which the yellow
Journals have declared, that he is
fbwarting and hampering the Secretary
of the Navy (who ought, according to the
| Y. J. papers to be impeached),
and the fact that the Secretary of the
Navy has declared that Mr.. Boutelle is
doing no such thing only makes it the
more evident that Mr.. Boutelle does not
know his business and ought to be super
| seeded.
All this would be very funny if the sit
nation was not SO serious and the occasion
80 sad During the war one reckless news
paper in New York gave the government
so much trouble and put the cause of the
Union in so much peril by its faxed de-
spatches about government securities that
action against it was thought necessary
The fact that there are now many papers
that are in the business of making money
out of the credulity of people by just such
performances has caused many public
men to view with apprehension the COM
pIications which would result from such
performances in case the nation should
actually be involved in war. The most
absurd feature of this sensationalism, so
far at least as it affects the public, is that
it is put abroad not from any mistaken
i sense of patriotism but merely to make
money out Of the credulity of the public.