MY LIFE AND LOVES
PRAXITELES’ APHRODITE
FOREWORD
Here in the blazing heat of an American August,amid the hurry and scurry of New York, I sit downto write my final declaration of Faith, as a prefaceor foreword to the Story of my Life. Ultimately itwill be read in the spirit in which it has been writtenand I ask no better fortune. My journalism duringthe war and after the Armistice brought me prosecutionsfrom the Federal Government. The authoritiesat Washington accused me of sedition and though thethird Postmaster General, Ex-Governor Dockery, ofMissouri who was chosen by the Department as theJudge, proclaimed my innocence and assured me Ishould not be prosecuted again, my magazine (Pearson’s)was time and again held up in the post, and itscirculation reduced thereby to one-third. I wasbrought to ruin by the illegal persecution of PresidentWilson and his Arch-Assistant Burleson, and waslaughed at when I asked for compensation. The AmericanGovernment, it appears, is too poor to pay forits dishonorable blunders.
I record the shameful fact for the benefit of thoseRebels and Lovers of the Ideal who will surely findthemselves in a similar plight in future emergencies.For myself I do not complain. On the whole I havereceived better treatment in life than the average manand more lovingkindness than I perhaps deserved. Imake no plaint.
If America had not reduced me to penury I shouldprobably not have written this book as boldly as theideal demanded. At the last push of Fate (I ammuch nearer seventy than sixty) we are all apt tosacrifice something of Truth for the sake of kindlyreco