ducts himself properly. When a high official is caught
stealing the people rejoice, because it shows that the newspapers are
doing their duty.

In the sphere of social relations, Herr Grundschnitt learned, the
newspapers are mainly concerned with safeguarding the purity and
integrity of the home. Most of them do this by printing full accounts of
all murder and divorce trials. The professor told me that he could
recall nothing in literature that quite equals the white heat of
indignation with which the editor of the _Star_ once spoke of "the
festering national sore revealed in the proceedings of the Dives divorce
suit, the nauseous details of which the reader will find in all their
hideous completeness on the first three pages of the present issue,
together with all the photographs ruled out of evidence on the grounds
of decency." The press also serves the cause of public morals by holding
up to scorn the vices and extravagances of the vulgar rich, whose
ill-used millions, as they hasten to point out elsewhere, are nothing
more than what any American may look forward to, provided he has courage
and energy.

The same ingenious method of promoting virtue by holding up vice to
obloquy is pursued in every other field, the learned German told me. The
newspapers do not print the names of men who support their wives, but
they print the names of men who do not, or who support more than one.
They do not publish the photographs of honest bank clerks, but of
dishonest ones, and of these only when they have stolen a very large
sum. They pay no attention to a clergyman as long as he advocates the
brotherhood of man, but they have large headlines about the minister who
believes in the moderate use of the Scotch highball. They overlook a
college professor's epoch-making researches in American history, and
take him up when he comes out in favour of an exclusive diet of raw
spinach. From the newspaper point of view, a college professor counts
less than a professional gambler; a gambler counts less than an actress;
a good actress counts less than a bad one; a bad actress counts less
than a prize-fighter; a prize-fighter counts less than a chimpanzee that
has been taught to smoke cigarettes; and an educated chimpanzee counts
less than a millionaire who suffers from paranoia. By continuously
pondering on the horrors of crime and vice as depicted in the
newspapers, the American people are roused to such a hatred of evil that
some editors r