The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1919-01-25
A TIMELY MEETING

n IIuEL DEEIhNU
That was a notable meeting held in New York last Fri
day night to protest against the appointment, by a Tammany
mayor, of William Randolph Hearst to serve in a conspicu-
Gus place in the committee that is to represent that city in
welcoming back to America the soldiers who carried the flag
across the sea on a mission that Hearst opposed.
New York is Americas principal port on the Atlantic. VI
its voters less than one in five was born in America OF Amer
icm parents. 1t is the only American city in which a Hearst
Tammany mayor could be elected. 1t is the only American
city in which a mayor would dare to place a man of Hearst's
record on such a committee.
Scores of those appointed to serve with Hearst declined
the honor" and scores of others, on learning OF Hearsts ap-
pointment, sent their designations. Many patriotic organiza-
lions engaged i'm war work protested, along with others, such
as the American Defense League and the G. A. r. Demands were
made on Washington that if this was the KIND OF welcome
New York proposed then the troops should be landed at
some other port. The Legislature of South Dakota went on
record to this effect by unanimous vote, so far as the troops
of that state were concerned.
Many of the soldiers in France, on learning of this &C
ton of the New York mayor, have sent their protest and
some have asked that a formal welcome be waived entirely
rather than subject them to this. One battalion, recently ar
irving, learned of Hearsts connection with the committee
while at sea, and after discussion directed the colonel IN
command to communicate by wireless with the mayor or his
committee and ask to be relieved OF any reception at the
hands of Mr.. Hearst.
The meeting on Friday night was held at Madison
Square Garden and was presided over by DR.. Hibben, presi-
dent of Princeton University and successor to Woodrow
Wilson in that position. Among the speakers was DR.. Man
ming, rector of Trinity church; Rev. Parks Cadman, James NJ.
Beck and others. DIR. Manning proposed a committee I'LL
would be free from any pro-German faint, and characterized
the appointment of Hearst as a stigma on the city. DR..
Cadman asserted that no man who had played the kaisers
game to the limit of safety should, after receiving the hand
clasp of the Teuton offer his hand in welcoming our return
ing Understanding from a mission he had, with every
pro- German now in American internment camps opposed and
often by methods as devious and dislOyal.
X K 4
And so a new committee was launched, to be known as
the Citizens Committee of Welcome" 1t will be composed
of one hundred per cent Americans. There will be no place
in its membership for any man who justified the SINKING OF
the Lusitania; who approved the invasion of Belgium and
condoned the rape and ravishment that followed; who JUST
fled the murder of Edith Cavell and whose conduct toward
our allies who preceded us into the war for the rescue of
civilization was such that his newspapers and his news
service were barred from France, from England and from
Belgium, on the theory that their news columns carried Sc
cet code messages from the German government to the
kaiser's agents in those countries and in America.
There was but one possible object in the appointment of
Hearst to a conspicuous place on that committee. mat ob-
iect was to restore him to the status of a loyal American.
election to him. And so this great patriotic occasion was
chosen for the withdrawing of the reasonable blotches that
besmear the record of this journalistic renegade, associate
of BernstOrff, BolO Pasha and their gang, referred to by the
former kaiser on at least two occasions as having been
"very helpful" to "our cause 1t is in line with his telegram
from Florida to his editor in New York concerning the use
of the flag and the "Star Spangled Banner" 1t would give
him an american appearance" and might "help to sell pa
pers."
That meeting was timely; the need for it was a national
scandal, but the meeting was necessary.