Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1913 — That Libel Suit of Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. [ARTICLE]

That Libel Suit of Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt.

The libel suit of Theodore Roosevelt against Editor Newett at Marquette, Mich., ended as spectacularly as It began, by the editor admitting that he had ladled to find evidence to support his allegation of Roosevelt’s drunkenness and that from this and the testimony of the eminent witnesses in the plaintiffs behalf he was cohvinced that he had been mistaken. It was the statement of a manly man whose editorial utterance had been made in good faith and only voiced a belief which had been widely prevalent at the time. At the plaintiffs own suggestion he was given a judgment of six cents, and each party paid his own costs. Why Editor Newett, of an obscure country paper of 2,000 circulation, Should have been selected as the “goat,” when many bigger and richer newspapers than his had said practically the same thing, and when Albert J. Beveridge was quoted as saying the Colonel was “teaed up” wfaen*he called Judge Anderson a “jackass and a crook,” will always be a puzzle to many, but no doubt the Colonel had a reason.

Two things were brought out by the evidence, viz: that the Colonel has a large circle of intimate friends who never saw him under the influence of liquor, and that he is one of those fortunate beings who “can touch it or let it alone.” The impression his own testimony leaves upon the public mind is suggestive of Sairy Gamp, who “could not abear the taste of it” but always wanted a bottle left on the mantel where she could “put her lips to it if so dispoged.”' The ex-president, as a moderate drinker, was no doubt more annoyed by the reports of bls intoxication than if he had been a total abstainer. And yet he would have served the rising generation and perhaps his own standing better if he had followed the example of Lincoln, Grant and other great men whose names lost none of their luster by passiing unnoticed the newspaper stories and curbstone gossip that buzzed so continuously about them during their lives. As for Editor Newett, he has passed through an ordeal which every editor is liable to have thrust upon him at some time or other, and met it courageously and wisely. His statement of his own case made in open court was remarkably clear, fair and able, and his adventure with the “lion hunter” has lost him nothing in the estimation of his brethren of the quill or of the public.—Monticello Herald.