Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1908-02-20
"PURCHASEDPRESS"
COL. HENRY WATTERSON ON PRESI.
Dent ROOSEVELT.
Says Presidents Belief In Corrupt
Press is a Pipe Dream. Pre- eSidenf
Has Fine, Elastic Imagination,
Says the Colonel, and is Given to
"Seeing Things"

Col. Henry Watterson doesn't be-
lieve that President Roosevelt is al
ways the sincere and stable creature
that he pretends to be. Indeed, Col.
WattersOn says in The Louisville
Courier-Journal of recent date a lot
Of things about the president worth
Anowing-andg here are few of
them:
THE president processes to believe
deep down in the bottom of his heart
that great many of the newspapers
of the United States are corrupted
by Standard Oil. Well, the president
professed just as solemnly, little
while ago, to believe in theicorporeal
existence of body of political con-
spirators with a $5,O0O,OO0 acorrup-
ton fund.
"The president, awhen the exigen-
cies of circumstances seem to demand
it, can get himself to believe very
great many things vastly more i'm
probable that that the whale actually
swallowed Jonah, or sthat Jonah ac-
tualiy swallowed the whale.
~ finea elastic Imagination has
our president. A coruscating eye,
and,A as the late Bill Nye said, AN
other yegY closely resembling it, en-
|aDle him 10 seeJa' great hany inter-
esting things that are just as horri-
flying to a patriot as they would be
if they really existed, .-.--.--.-.-.
=. :" 1t is. very easy says. Mr.. Wan
Bibbef, to call a man fool, and it
is very hard for man who is called
1 fool not to get angry and throw
the other man out of the window
'It is by no means reflection
upon Mr.. Roosevelt to say that he
owes a great deal of his popularity
to the American press. He has been
ever eager. for praise from the dem
ocratic, and the republican newspa-
pers. And they have given it to him
| without measure. '..--..
Party lines have not been drawn
in commencing the president, ant
they have not been drawn in CRITICS
ing him. Recently there has beer
more of a note of criticism than 81
recommendation in the comments o1
the newspapers of'both parties. With
his customary Intolerance Of the
opinions Of the other fellow Mr.
| Roosevelt has showed ill temper. but
4 with less than his customary politi
cal sagacity, he has shown a spirit
of unfairness that must make many
of the republican newspapers feel to-
ward him very much as Mr.. Van Bib.
ber did toward Mr.. Carruthers.
| Nothing is so easy as to raise
the cry of bought when a newspaper
does not agree with ones political
views or exhibit a sympathetic in.
terest in ones tantrums.
| "Mr. Davis, of Arkansas, who says
himself that Mr.. Roosevelt's recent
special message eclipsed his brightest
dream of the oratory of annihilation
beat Mr.. Roosevelt to the housetops
by couple of leaps with the state
ment that almost all of the newspa-
pers are bought by the trusts. 1.
mo one was surprised when Mr.
Davis shouted 'unclean' at all of the
newspapers that INDUCED in hilarity
| in the headlines above reports of his
maiden speech. 1t was to be expect
ed that cheap and shallow denia-
gogue WOULD say, and conceivable
that he might believe, that the cor
rNpted alone, could differ from him
But the president should know better
than to initiate Mr.. Davis.
"If the president is really, seeing
things there is, Of course, nothing tc
recommend but a rest cure. Il he Is
merely trying to make the people be-
lieve that widespread corruption OF
the press exists it is not worth while
for anyone to take him seriously"