Falsely Sentimental Fiction

An occasion of honest sorrow in the hands of overambitious journalists is often capitalized for sentimental purposes to the point of hypocrisy and travesty. The death of President Harding was a shock to almost everyone. Mr. Harding was generally respected, if only in virtue of his position. It is no overstatement to say that there was genuine public sorrow at his sudden death brought about by the cares of office.

Not content with being 100% Americans, however, some editors proceeded to improve on nature by extravagant protestations. Such headlines as "WHOLE COUNTRY PLUNGED IN GLOOM" cluttered the press. Of course, no such thing was the case. Of 110,000,000 people considerably more than 99.9% had no personal acquaintance with the late President. To them he was a name, a picture, the holder of a respected office, the author of certain addresses which most had read in part and a few had heard. It was contrary to nature that these people should be " plunged in gloom." Nearly all went about their business with undiminished vitality. They were sorry, they showed public signs of respect and mourning, but it was not natural that any but a few, aside from Mr. Harding's personal friends, should feel a sense of intimate loss.

Despite the fact that approximately as much honest work and human conversation took place the day after the President's death as on any other week day, many editors--even editors of papers with national and international reputations--printed such extravagance as, the following: "It was probably the strangest silence in the city's history. From street, mill and skyscraper arose the numberless metallic sounds forming the ceaseless, surf-like roar of New York's monotone. But there was one entity of that roar which was almost missing, the sound of the human voice. . . . New York . . . spoke only when it had to,, and then for the most part in quiet, repressed monosyllables . . . This silence was maintained all day. Never was there such a lack of conversation along Broadway or Fifth Avenue, or in office or factory ..."

The editor of the paper which published this falsely-sentimental fiction (New York Tribune) once received a letter from a wag: "Kindly stop our Tribune immediately. Grandmother died last night."

The opposite extreme of poor taste was exemplified by another Manhattan paper, The New York Call (Socialist) which assumed a tone not common even in the rabidly Democratic press: "HARDING, JOCKEYED TO TOP, DIED AT LOW EBB OF CAREER . . . GENIAL HANDSHAKER WRECKED BY BURDEN TOO HEAVY FOR HIM."

Of President Coolidge the Call said: " President Harding is succeeded by Vice President Coolidge, a narrow-minded, provincial reactionary, to whom social progress is an occasion for alarm and a new idea is an offense requiring stern rebuke. His accession to the presidency is an affliction which we must endure with the knowledge that it could hardly be worse."