548-558.
near the frontier. Its obvious intention was to stir up disaffec
tion and discouragement through reports of serious reverses of
the Allies and of the impossibility of America being able to send troops to France before 1919.16 But the ultimate exposure of
the real character of the newspaper undoubtedly acted as a boomerang against the inventors of the scheme. In the opinion of The Nation and The Athenaeum , it was well known that the Russian “ Whites ” issued and circulated forged numbers of the Russian communist newspapers . These were circulated clandestinely in Russia and they supplied sympathetic correspondents in “ White ” centers with damaging “ quotations”
from the Russian official press to be telegraphed back to London .17 But if the forged newspaper as such has been almost unknown , forged letters printed innocently by the press have not been uncommon , although naturally the greatest care is taken to prevent their acceptance , - if for no other reason , on account of the risk of libel suits involved . Among the most famous of these forged letters was the one concerning Charles Parnell and the London Times. The Times published April 18, 1887, a facsimile letter purporting to have been written by Parnell nine days after the Phoenix Park mur
ders apologizing for his attitude in regard to them . Mr. Parnell declared in the House of Commons that evening that the letter was a forgery. A commission appointed to investigate this and other charges began its sittings September , 1888, and reported February, 1890 , that they found the letter to be a forgery .
The self-confessed forger committed suicide and Mr. Parnell recovered £5,000 damages from The Times in an action for libel, the matter being settled out of court.18 16 Caspar Whitney, New York Tribune, February 3, 1918 . 17 The London Daily Herald reproduced in reduced facsimile a part of one
of these forged newspapers. At the bottom of the page was the name of a London printer . - The Nation and The Athenaeum , March 5 , 1921, 28 : 767. 18 Full accounts of the forgery are given in John Morley , Life ofGladstone, II , Bk. X , chap. III ; A . L . Thorold , Life of Henry Labouchere, chaps. XIII XIV ; G . A . Sala , Life and Adventures, II, chap. LXI; John Macdonald , ed ., Diary of the Parnell Commission , Revised from “ The Daily News," 1890 ; Hansard , vols. 313 , 341; The Times reprinted in pamphlet form the alleged Parnell letters and its leaders on the subject. Apparently The Times took no precautions and applied no tests to ascer
tain the genuineness of the letter published . It was after the retirement of
