Prejudices, second seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, second series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
The fraudulence of Wilson is now admitted by all save a few survivors
of the old corps of official press-agents, most of them devoid of
both honesty and intelligence. No unbiased man, in the presence of
the revelations of Bullitt, Keynes and a hundred other witnesses, and
of the Russian and Shantung performances, and of innumerable salient
domestic phenomena, can now believe that the _Doctor dulcifluus_ was
ever actually in favor of any of the brummagem ideals he once wept
for, to the edification of a moral universe. They were, at best, no
more than ingenious _ruses de guerre,_ and even in the day of their
widest credit it was the Espionage Act and the Solicitor-General to
the Postoffice, rather than any plausibility in their substance,
that got them their credit. In Roosevelt's case the imposture is
less patent; he died before it was fully unmasked. What is more, his
death put an end to whatever investigation of it was under way, for
American sentimentality holds that it is indecent to inquire into the
weaknesses of the dead, at least until all the flowers have withered
on their tombs. When, a year ago, I ventured in a magazine article to
call attention to Roosevelt's philosophical kinship to the Kaiser I
received letters of denunciation from all parts of the United States,
and not a few forthright demands that I recant on penalty of lynch law.
Prudence demanded that I heed these demands. We live in a curious and
often unsafe country. Haled before a Roosevelt judge for speeding my
automobile, or spitting on the sidewalk, or carrying a jug, I might
have been railroaded for ten years under some constructive corollary
of the Espionage Act. But there were two things that supported me
in my contumacy to the departed. One was a profound reverence for
and fidelity to the truth, sometimes almost amounting to fanaticism.
The other was the support of my venerable brother in epistemology,
the eminent Iowa right-thinker and patriot, Prof. Dr. S. P. Sherman.
Writing in the _Nation,_ where he survives from more seemly days than
these, Prof. Dr. Sherman put the thing in plain terms. "With the
essentials in the religion of the militarists of Germany," he said,
"Roosevelt was utterly in sympathy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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