Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/214

 views of political conditions in Washington, and label it "Exclusive Dispatch." It will take the dispatches which come through the Associated Press, and put hate head-lines over them—and sometimes it is so overpowered by hate that the head-lines do not fit the context! Thus I read a large head-line, "STOKES WOMAN SENT TO PRISON"; and when I read the dispatch under the head-line I discover, quite plainly stated, that the "Stokes woman" is not sent to prison! Again, the Western Union Telegraph Company defies the United States Government, refusing to accept the decision of the War Labor Board. This is placed under the head-line: "TELEGRAPH COMPANY DEFIES UNION LABOR." A few days later comes the news that the telegraphers' union is threatening to strike because of the company's attitude. This bears the title: "TELEGRAPHERS' UNION DEFIES GOVERNMENT."

Needless to say, a newspaper which thus lies in the interest of privilege is deeply and reverently religious. Every Monday the "Times" prints a couple of pages of extracts from sermons, and now and then its editorial page breaks into a spiritual ecstasy of its own. I clipped one sample during the war—two columns, twelve point leaded, with caps here and there: "The One Tremendous Thought."

And what is this thought which overwhelms the "Times"? The thought "that in this war the world is to be made safe, not so much for democracy, as for men's souls." This war, "sinister, cruel, bloody and bestial though it be," has placed our soldier-boys under the care of religion. "Upon the Protestant soldiers are the sleepless eyes of the Young Men's Christian Association. Around our Catholic soldiers are the faithful arms of the Knights of Columbus." Christianity had been weakening before "the noisy school of the sciences"; but—

Now cometh the war! And behold, a professedly Christian world that had been slipping away from belief in THE GREAT MIRACLE OF THE AGES, now swings back to the old belief again. The Christian world is more truly Christian.

This then is the striking fact of the war.

And this is the one tremendous thought.

And from this overpowering sublimity, take a jump to the news columns, in which the "Times" reports family scandals