Journal’s Cartoon Pictured Murder

Showed Crowned Heads in Fear of Death and Made the President Appear
Next in Line for Assassination.

IN ONE of the thousands of letters condemning the New York Journal as the instigator of the assassination at Buffalo a reader has sent to The Press a cartoon cut from the New York Evening Journal of April 1, 1901, entitled “An Object Lesson.”
     The cartoon perhaps was the worst (if degrees may be calculated for such infamy) of the malignant series to which attention has been called. Its reproduction would be impossible at any time. It exhaled the breath of assassination.
     It warned William McKinley to have a care lest he have to protect himself with armor. It held before his gaze imbecile pictures of foreign monarchs who lived in fear of bombs and dynamite. And in printed words the New York Journal told William McKinley to “Beware!”
     A clownish Uncle Sam was pictured sitting in a rocking chair, smoking a cigar. Standing near the chair there was a caricature of William McKinley of the kind that the Yellow Journal readers have had put before their eyes day after day and month after month—a caricature of the President of the United States so gross and so vile that The Press must forbear even a description of it at this time.
     In one hand Uncle Sam was pictured holding the full page of a newspaper to view—a newspaper appropriately labeled “Morning Journal.” Across the top of the sheet was the caption:
     “UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN.”
     Directly under this caption were four pictures representing four rulers of Europe, their faces given the likeness of the idiot or half-wit. Puppet crowns sat on their heads. The idiotic expression of the faces was combined with the expression of fear. Under the first of the monarchs’ caricatures were these words in the guise of newspaper headlines:
     “The Czar living in terror in armor-plated rooms.”
     Under the second were these words:
     “The Kaiser fears a plot against him.”
     Under the third was this inscription:
     “The King of Italy found dynamite under his palace.”
     Under the fourth was the following:
     “The Sultan in great fear of assassination.”
     And under the whole cartoon were these words, put in the mouth of Uncle Sam:
     “BEWARE OF IMPERIALISM, WILLIAM! LOOK AT THESE FOUR HORRIBLE EXAMPLES!”
     There in that picture was to be seen the essence of all that of which the public now declares the New York Journal guilty—the ridicule of the President of the United States, the exploitation of the New York Journal as the suggesting force to Anarchy, the conveying of the spirit of regicide to the people of a republic—and, above all, the WARNING of the editor of the paper:
     “Beware of Imperialism! Look at these Horrible Examples!”