their publication was suspended for four days, the editors and owners were arrested though quickly released, and the self-confessed forger was imprisoned. But the matter long haunted the papers that had originally published it, or had reprinted it, like the New Orleans Picayune,—an offense that in the eyes of General Butler merited the suspension of that paper from May 23 to July 9, 1864.21
Forged documents have for centuries been a favorite device for attacking a weak or an unpopular minority, but such documents have had comparatively little relation to the newspaper press, except as this press has been a convenient means for establishing their spurious character.22
Not uncommon are reprints of entire or of single pages of the
The letter was subsequently privately printed without the knowledge of the author, by persons two-thirds of whom did not know him or belong to
his political party, “ as a frank, fearless, and manly protest against a gross act of tyranny."
A full account of the episode is given in Appleton 's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1864 , pp. 389– 393.
21 Brief accounts are given in J. M . Lee, History of American Journalism, pp. 297–299; J. L. Heaton, The Story of a Page, pp. 2–3. The death, July 24, 1917, of Manton Marble, the editor of the World at the time of its suspension, has recalled the story to the daily press of that date.
Only part of the edition of the World of May 18 contained the proclamation , - an indication of its honest effort to retrieve its error.
The Sisson documents were intended to discredit the Soviet government by showing that it was having improper dealings with Germany. The authenticity of a part of the documents was seriously questioned in Paris , as also by the head of the American Red Cross mission in Russia, and by the head of the Finnish Information Bureau in New York , but through the Committee on Public Information they were published widely in American newspapers.
The chief service rendered in the affair by the American press, notably by the New York Evening Post, was to point out their glaring inconsistencies and to pave the way for an examination of their authenticity. This examination was made by a committee of scholars, but its report did not meet with unanimous acceptance. With the close of the war the subject passed into oblivion. - New York Evening Post, September -November, 1918 ; The Nation , September 28, November 23, 1918, 107: 334,616 -617. The series of documents known collectively as the “ Protocols of Zion ” was intended to show the existence of a conspiracy between the Jews and the Freemasons to support Bolshevism. A committee of learned Jews gave the Protocols an exhaustive examination and published an elaborate report in which they declared the documents to be “ a base forgery " and the evidence given in support of this conclusion seemed indisputable. The daily press gave wide publicity to the report. It may be found in full in the New York Times, December 1, 1920, and further evidence in the same journal of February 25 , 1921. The report was also published in pamphlet form under the title “ The Protocols, ” Bolshevism and the Jews. 1921.
