occurred during the recent exposition in Paris.




IX


When the delegates were appointed to the International Scientific
Congress at the Paris Exposition of 1900, how little did anybody
imagine that the great conference would end in the most gigantic
scandal that ever stirred two continents?

Yet, had it not been for the pair of American newspapers published in
Paris, this scandal would never have been aired, for the continental
press is so well muzzled that when it bites its teeth merely meet in
the empty atmosphere with a discreet snap.

But to the Yankee nothing excepting the Monroe Doctrine is sacred, and
the unsopped watch-dogs of the press bite right and left, unmuzzled.
The biter bites--it is his profession--and that ends the affair; the
bitee is bitten, and, in the deplorable argot of the hour, "it is up
to him."

So now that the scandal has been well aired and hung out to dry in the
teeth of decency and the four winds, and as all the details have been
cheerfully and grossly exaggerated, it is, perhaps, the proper moment
for the truth to be written by the only person whose knowledge of all
the facts in the affair entitles him to speak for himself as well as
for those honorable ladies and gentlemen whose names and titles have