From the 'Herald to the WorltP 305




3o6 News Hunting on Three Continents

The most heroic act of my career — outrivalling *thc
very stuff of triumph' experiment (to quote the words
of President Wilson used thirty-two years later in a
very different connection) — ^was the procuring and pub-
lishing in Mr. Bennett's own paper of a brutal, mali-
cious and fallacious attack upon him by Jay Gould,
prepared for the Tribune by a man soon after incar-
cerated as a lunatic, but refused to the Herald for
publication. I was a very anxious editor that night,
until a proof of the screed was obtained at one o'clock
from Colonel Ashley W. Cole, city editor of the Press
and an old Herald reporter. The letter was probably
the most venomous and contemptible ever written, and
was intended for publication in all the city journals
except the one whose owner was attacked. Mr. Gould,
as I have said, did not write it, but was induced to
sign it while in a condition of rage over a commercial
fight between the Western Union and the Mackay-
Bennett cable lines. Obviously, to destroy utterly the
effect of the letter, it must be printed without the omis-
sion of a word. Only one means existed by which to
denounce its infamous character — the heading. The
editorial page had gone to press, and would not have
been effective. But the heading, half a column in
length, was fully up to the Gould standard for abuse.
