Puck to the Rescue

Udo J. Keppler's double-page spread divides the argument visually: on the left, two towering monuments on "Barren Island" bear statues of newspaper barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, their pedestals plastered with yellow sheets crediting each man personally for American victory in the Spanish-American War — a direct jab at the self-promotional "yellow journalism" both papers ran throughout the conflict. On the right, History herself, rendered as a classical Roman matrona, calmly records the actual heroes in her ledger: McKinley, Dewey, Sampson, Schley, Hobson, Wainwright, Roosevelt, and others. The caption reads Puck to the Rescue — He Erects a Monument to Two Celebrities That History Has Neglected, the sarcasm unmistakable. Keppler's argument is clean: press vanity had hijacked a soldiers' war, and only satire — not the press itself — would set the record straight.