A Filthy Mess

Mud is a fruitful soil for farming and for journalism. The public likes it. The populace enjoys seeing mud from a rolling wheel spatter the honest citizen. In journalism, as in commerce, there are always some ready to pander to the public taste.

Five years ago a wealthy Manhattan realtor sued his wife for divorce. The charges were filth. The case was tried before a judge (no jury) and the decision was against the husband. But before the decision could be signed, the judge was elevated to a higher bench, and the case had to be retried. It is now on trial before a jury. The man was William Earl Dodge Stokes; and his wife, Helen Elwood Stokes. It is estimated that they have spent over $1,000,000 on the case. They cover each other with mud. The public applauds.

It would seem that in such a case there would be no need for journalistic enlargement on the facts. Not so. The newspaper with the largest circulation in America--a paper itself not as old as this divorce case-- a paper that, therefore, should be the best barometer of what the public wants, finds it profitable to add its quota to the mud thrown.

Perhaps Mr. Stokes is a deep-dyed villain. At any rate it has not been settled in court of law. But this paper, the Daily News (Manhattan) pillories him before the public eye, championing the cause of Mrs. Stokes. It made even Mr. Stokes' comparatively innocent appearance-- a harmless if not a handsome face-- the subject of an almost libelous cartoon. And verbally it piled on mud to the dimensions of a plaster cast:

BEAUTIES ON STOKES' LOVE PYRE.

MILLIONAIRE'S HISTORY LIKE

SCARLET PAGEANT;

KNEW WOMEN LIKE HORSES.

How many girls were attracted by the wealth and insidious ways of this multi-millionaire lover who boasts even now, at seventy-three, that he knows women as well as he knows horses? ... It would be a long list, almost as long as the list of his real estate properties, and it would be a list of fair women flung away, whose names he delighted to drag in the gutter, to besmirch and defame, whenever one of them crossed his path after he had discarded her. . . . The State's Attorney and the Grand Jury of Cook County, Ill., are delving into a sink of depravity, baring the scandals of Chicago's segregated district 18 years ago, to find, as the Prosecutor believes, William Earl Dodge Stokes at the vortex of a veritable whirlpool of crimes, of allegations of brazen corruption and almost unbelievable perjury, all directed at Helen Elwood Stokes, his present wife.

Stokes fighting with back to wall . . . prepared like Samson, to bring down the very temple of his own home, if beneath the ruins, he can crush the woman who bore him two children and was then tossed away like worm-eaten fruit.

From the moment the suit was begun he fought it not merely with tooth and nail, but with all the mud and filth he could reach, hurling the dirt in every direction. . . .

Moral: Journalist, before thou seekest to cast out the mud from thy brother's hand, fling down the filth from thine own.