The Lusitania Murders

performed with all the lack of panache it deserved. Fortunately the din of dinner conversation all but drowned out the orchestra’s brainlessly lilting aural wallpaper. We were drinking beer from steins, having completed our prime beef and red cabbage.

McClure was a stern-looking character, with a short blunt nose and a carelessly trimmed white mustache, his blue eyes piercing in an almond-oval face topped with a shock of gray hair; a thought-gouged crease between his eyes suggested eternal skepticism. His brown vested suit with darker brown bow tie might have been the attire of a chief clerk, not the man who invented newspaper syndication, and whose McClure’s Magazine had taken on corruption in corporations and city government.

After all, the term “muckraker” had been coined to describe McClure’s efforts, which included publishing Lincoln Steffan’s “Shame of Our Cities” series and blistering exposes on Standard Oil and the United Mine Workers.

The third and final member of our little all-male dinner party was a thickset fellow in his mid-thirties who looked rather like a bulldog in a three-piece suit, a navy suit as rumpled as its wearer’s homely face. This was Edward Rumely, the owner and publisher of The New York Evening Mail, a recent acquisition of this scion of the Rumely farm implement manufacturing clan. The family wealth may have derived from diesel farm equipment, but Edward Rumely had other ideas about making his own fortune. . in publishing.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” I said to McClure, and then lifted my stein in an informal toast toward the vested bulldog. “To both of you-for your new position, Mr. McClure, and for landing such a prestigious editor for the News, Mr. Rumely.”

“You may not be aware, sir,” McClure said to me, his voice a gruff baritone, “that I’ve lost control of my own magazine. . to my ‘loyal’ partners, and various investors.”

“I had not been so informed,” I said. But I did know that S.S. McClure’s reputation was that of a man of innovative, grandiose ideas. . who lacked in business sense.

“Part of the buyout of the magazine that still bears my name,” McClure said, “is a ten-year noncompetition clause.”

“That applies to magazines,” Rumely put in, in his knife-blade tenor, “not to newspapers. . Meaning I’ve bagged one of the biggest names in publishing to edit the News.”

The line between McClure’s eyes tensed-the bluntness of Rumely’s expression understandably offended him.

“If I’m not overstepping,” I said, “surely you don’t need to work, Mr. McClure. . ” He was approaching sixty and most certainly was comfortably wealthy.

“I want to work, sir,” McClure said. “I need to work. Money has never been my objective-communicating progressive ideas to the public, that, sir, is my calling.”

“I understand the impulse,” I said. “I’ve hoped to educate the unwashed masses myself. . not in political areas, where I admit a certain lack of knowledge and even interest. But in the arts-painting, literature.”

“That’s why we’re considering you,” McClure said, “for our literary editor.”

“Book reviews, short essays,” Rumely explained, “publishing announcements, gossip. . ”

In those days, “gossip” meant reporting the books writers were working on, or travels they might be taking for research purposes-not peccadilloes, sexual or otherwise.

“I’m the man for the job,” I said with no modesty. “I feel an affinity with you, Mr. McClure-in our shared desire to make a difference in the world. If I could persuade readers to turn from romance novels to Joseph Conrad, if I could move them to protest censorship, as pertains to Dreiser and others-”

“All well and good, sir,” McClure cut in. “But you have a reputation for a sharp tongue-for sardonic, even sarcastic condescension.”

“Guilty,” I said with a shrug.

“I would not censor you, but I would insist that you strive to abandon any mean-spiritedness in your psyche.”

“I was younger then,” I said, referring to my controversial tenure at a Smart Set, as well as my biting Los Angeles Times writings, which had put me on the map.

McClure’s eyes appraised me unblinkingly. “How old are you, sir?”

“Thirty-three,” I said.*

He nodded, obviously glad to hear I was no longer a young pup. “This Lusitania voyage will be a test of your new maturity, then.”

“I consider it a golden opportunity, Mr. McClure.”

“Your journalistic sense of fair play will be tested.”

“How well I know it. I wrote a fairly vicious piece on Hubbard in Smart Set.”

The homespun philosopher Elbert Hubbard was booked on the Lusitania; I was to ingratiate myself with him and do “the definitive interview” with the so-called “Sage of East Aurora” (New York). That I considered him a boob and a fraud apparently was not to get in the way of this non-mean-spirited effort.

“Though you’ve written of him,” McClure said, “you have never met Hubbard. .?”

“I’ve been spared that pleasure thus far.”

McClure’s eyes tightened. “You should understand that I admire Elbert Hubbard-consider him a sort of roughhewn genius. . and I’m not alone. Clarence Darrow, Henry Ford, Booker T. Washington, even Teddy Roosevelt, have sat looking up at him.”

Which only meant that even the best among us have our foolish streaks.

“Impressive,” I said.

“Keep an open mind, sir. And do your best not to alienate your subject.”

To McClure, Rumely said, “That’s why we’ve arranged for our friend here to travel under a pseudonym. His true identity is known by Staff Captain Anderson, and he will of course carry a proper passport to present at journey’s end, in Liverpool.”

McClure was frowning, the line between his eyes like an exclamation point. “I dislike such deceptions.”

“Modern journalism requires bold methodology,” I opined. “If I were to travel under my own name, Hubbard would surely recognize it, and never grant me an interview.”

“Several of the other prominent passengers,” Rumely put in, “might react similarly, if they happen to know of our man’s acid reputation.”

McClure said to Rumely, as if I were not present, “Is he aware of the other potential interviewees?”

“I thought we would discuss that after you’ve taken your leave, Sam,” Rumely said.

McClure had already announced that his attendance at our little gathering would be abbreviated, as he was meeting with his wife and a group of theater-goers to attend D.W. Griffith’s new moving picture, Birth of a Nation, at the Liberty Cinema on Forty-second Street. It was said the show elevated that nickelodeon novelty to the level of art-which I sincerely doubted, though I did relish the thought of the theater’s new cooling system, as stifling summer months lay ahead.

“Just so we understand each other,” McClure said, his hard gaze travelling from Rumely to me. “I suppose you know that I consider myself a Progressive.”

“I do,” I said, and I did-from backing Teddy Roosevelt to extolling the virtues of health foods, McClure was if anything a freethinker.

“So is my friend Edward here,” McClure went on, and placed a hand on the bulldog’s shoulder. “We share many interests. . We met when my son was attending the Montessori school Edward ran for a time in LaPorte, Indiana. . Edward agrees with my current campaign, for example, to form an international organization that would guarantee peace among all nations, world round.”*

“How interesting,” I said, not really caring. Politics were anathema to me.

“You see, my sympathies in the current struggle are with Great Britain. . and Edward’s are with Germany. As reasonable men who can agree to disagree, we have struck a bargain-the News will air both points of view, but ban the propaganda of both.”

“I wish more newspapers would take a neutral position on the war,” I said. “I’m appalled by these crude British-slanted atrocity stories-Belgium children mutilated, women raped, shopkeepers murdered. . tasteless rabble-rousing trash.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” McClure said. “But I will not tolerate a pro-German point of view, either. . is that