None could see what good it would do to quarrel openly with those in power.
Harden became the pioneer of the new journalism. He started a weekly paper, Die Zukunft (The Future). A storm of antagonism arose in all quarters.
Harden became the most discussed man in Germany. His paper was read everywhere. He attracted the youth of Germany. The modernists flocked to him; his paper became the mouthpiece of young, rebellious Germany. Never before had such free language been used in a German periodical.
He made enemies galore. Mercilessly he tore down superstitions and showed the inherent weakness of an absolute monarchy. Even his foes read his paper.
His circulation became extraordinary for a one-man magazine.
There was rarely a week in which some influential noble or some powerful organization did not start libel suits against the Zukunft. Harden hardly ever retracted a statement. He never published an article without proof of its veracity in hand. "Very well," was his eternal answer, "I shall prove and substantiate in court the truth of what I have written." Many of his opponents believed he would not dare to go to court. But he dared. A few sensational libel cases, which he won, left him free to do as he pleased.
He became the most feared publicist in Germany. This is what Harden wrote about William II in 1896:
Germany cannot, in view of the results of the six years since Bismarck's dismissal, refrain from asking their Emperor whether it was indeed necessary to remove, with ruthless hand, the man who raised the Hohenzollern House to a pinnacle, placed the military power of Prussia on a sure basis, founded the German Empire and prepared a future for German influence…
It would be criminal to ignore the dark clouds slowly and threateningly gathering on the German horizon. It would be criminal also to keep silence, seeing that the storm which piled up the clouds blew from the highest point of observation where the greatest serenity of mind ought to prevail.
He dared to publish his famous open letter addressed to William Hohenzollern. The Eulenburg scandal came as a result. A few suicides among the nobility followed the exposure about the Round Table of the "Most High."
Everybody predicted Harden's imprisonment, his trial for lese majeste.
Nothing happened. He was stronger even than His Imperial Majesty's Court, and everybody knew that he would show little reverence, and still less consideration, for the Kaiser's sacred person. The scandal of the Kaiser's friendship with the notorious Krupp some years later was Harden's complete justification.
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CHAPTER VI
In the years from 1883 to 1887 I was working sixteen or seventeen hours a day on the Evening News, Bit by bit I found out the secret of journalistic success in London, and I may as well tell the story here. First of all, I discovered that the public did not care a row of pins for scholarly or even original leading articles. Arthur Walter praised this part of the Evening News very cordially, but I soon found that it had no effect whatever on the circulation. The first thing that gave me the clue to success was the divorce case of Lady Colin Campbell. I had met Lady Colin in Paris and admired, as every one else admired, her tall, superb figure and remarkable brunette beauty. I went to the court chiefly out of curiosity and heard her statement and cross-examination. I then begged the Evening News correspondent to give me a verbatim report, for I soon realized that no other paper would treat the case as it deserved. It was full of the most scabrous details. In successive editions that evening, I gave up the whole of the right-hand center page to it, and promised my readers, in the beginning, to give the fullest account possible of the trial. The question was how far I should report the lady's revelations.
I saw Arthur Walter in the evening, and I surprised him by telling him the details of the case; he agreed with me as to what should be published. In The Times account next morning, I found that they had drawn the line almost exactly where I had drawn it, though I had told the story at much greater length and made it much more interesting by adding detailed sketches of the chief personages. I pursued the same plan every day of the trial, making a most enthralling human story, as human as I dared in view of English convention.
The circulation of the paper almost doubled in the week, and the whole account attracted so much attention that Edmund Yates asked me to dinner, and while at dinner invited me to tell him how I had come to such extraordinary success. Everyone, he declared, was reading the Evening News for the report of the cause scandaleuse. One man, sitting almost opposite me at the table, sniffed again and again at my laughing outspokenness; it was, I learned afterwards, George Lewis-the famous solicitor.
The next day I received the proof of how envy and malevolence revenge themselves on success. George Lewis indicted the Evening News for obscene libel, and almost immediately the case came up before Mr. Justice Denman.
George Lewis read out some of the reports which I had printed and asked that I should be punished. Not wishing to put the paper to any expense, I defended the case in person, and my answer to the accusation was simply to show that I had followed with almost absolute exactness the example set by The Times, eliminating every scabrous detail just as The Times had eliminated them. "The standard of what is becoming," I said, "varies in every country and every age. I could do no better with a halfpenny paper than keep the limits established by The Times. This I have done," and I passed up my account with the account in The Times side by side, showing that we often stopped at the same word.
"What have you to say to that?" Mr. Justice Denman asked. My accuser, George Lewis, rose quickly. "I submit," said he, "that it's no answer whatever to the case. I contend that the Evening News is guilty of obscene libel, and I ask for a verdict on the strength of these reports."
"But," said Justice Denman, "if you are actuated by a respect for public morality, Mr. Lewis, why don't you select The Times rather than the less important Evening News?"
"Again, I submit," said Lewis, "that my accusation is unanswered."
Denman smiled and replied, "I give a verdict for the defendant, and wish to express my opinion that the case should never have been brought."
But I had learned my lesson. The fact that the Evening News published the longest and most detailed reports had doubled the circulation and brought the paper into the limelight. Now couldn't I go on to make the news pages more interesting? I at once set to work to get a couple of Paris papers, a couple of German papers, and used to glance through them every evening after my work of the day was supposed to have been finished.
As soon as I found either in Berlin, Rome, Madrid or Paris an interesting case, I rewrote it for the Evening News and soon saw that this was the road to success. The circulation of the paper rose rapidly, and people of some importance in journalism began to invite me out and show me favor; especially was this the case with Labouchere and Yates, whom I regarded as the two heads of the profession.
I made them both laugh heartily one evening after dinner by telling them of my progress downwards to success. I had edited the Evening News at first, I said, at the top of my thought as a scholar and a man of the world of twentyeight; nobody wanted my opinions, but as I went downwards and began to edit it as I felt at twenty, then at eighteen, then at sixteen, I was more successful; but when I got to my tastes at fourteen years of age, I found instantaneous response. "Kissing and fighting," I said, "were the only things I cared for at thirteen or fourteen, and those are the themes the English public desires and enjoys today."