eas in England it
is not impossible that there may be more scandals of a financial sort,
both in official circles and outside, than the public ever hears of
through the press; it is reasonably certain that in America the press
publishes full details of a good many more scandals than ever occur.

This peculiarity of the American press (for it is still peculiar to
America, in degree at least, if not in kind) does not arise from any
set purpose of blackening the reputation of the country in the eyes of
the outside world, but is entirely the result of "enterprise," of
individual ambition, and the extremity of partisan enthusiasm. Other
nations may be quite certain that they hear all the worst that is to be
told of the people of the United States. Out of the Spanish war arose
what came to be known as the "embalmed beef" scandal. American soldiers
in Cuba were furnished with a quantity of rations which, by the time
they reached the front and an effort was made to serve them out, were
entirely unfit for human consumption. Undoubtedly much suffering was
thereby caused to the men and probably some disease. But, equally
undoubtedly, the catastrophe arose from an error in judgment and not
from dishonesty of contractors or of any government official. But, as
the incident was handled by a section of the American press, it might
well, had the two great parties at the time been more evenly balanced in
public favour, have resulted in the ruin of the reputation of an
administration and the overthrow of the Republican party at the next
election.

If the Re-mount scandals and the Army Stores scandals which arose out of
England's South African war had occurred in America, I doubt if any
party could have stood against the storm that would have been provoked,
and, deriving their ideas of the affairs from the cabled reports,
Englishmen of all classes would still be shaking their heads over the
inconceivable dishonesty in the American public service and the
deplorable standard of honour in the American army. It may be necessary
and wholesome for a people that occasionally certain kinds of dirty
linen should be washed in public; but the speciality of the American
"yellow press"[342:1] is the skill which it shows in soiling clean linen
in private in order to bring it out into the streets to wash.

* * * * *

POSTSCRIPT--Reference has been made in the foregoing chapter to the
British peerage and I now propose to