Political Considerations of Vienna Period
doubtedly did exist. A few days were enough to turn some ridiculous affair in to a momentous act of state, while, conversely, vital problems were generally forgotten or rather were simply stolen away from the memory of the masses.
In the course of a few weeks names could be conjured up out of nothing, the incredible hopes of the great public attached to them, and a popularity even given them which a really important man often never enjoys in a lifetime; and these were names which, a month before, no one had so much as heard of; while at the same time old and tried figures of governmental or public life, in the best of their ability, simply died so far as the world was concerned, or were buried under such contumely that their names soon threatened to become symbols of vileness or rascality. We must study this infamous Jewish way of deluging the clean garments of honorable men with the swill-buckets of vile libel and slander from hundreds of directions at once as if by a magic spell—we must study it if we are to appreciate the real danger from these journalist scoundrels.
There is nothing which one of these intellectual robber barons would not adopt as a means of attaining his savory ends. He sniffs his way into the most secret family affairs, and he does not rest until his truffle-hunting instinct has rooted up some wretched occurrence which will serve to cook the unlucky victim’s goose. But if even the most thorough smelling uncovers absolutely nothing in either public or private life, a fellow of this stamp resorts to slander. He has a rooted conviction that some of it will stick despite a thousand contradictions, and that with the libel’s hundredfold repetition by all his accomplices the victim can usually put up no fight at all. This pack of scoundrels never undertakes anything from motives which might be credible or at least understandable to the rest of mankind. Heaven forfend! Attacking the rest of the world in the most scoundrelly way, these idle rascals, like cuttlefish, hide in a veritable cloud of rectitude and unctuous phrases, chattering of “journalistic duty” and similar falsehoods, and even—at congresses and conventions, occasions where these pests congregate in considerable numbers,—go so
93
