Retailed at second hand these remarks placed Mrs. Roosevelt in the unfavourable light of a hostess who was trying to make her guests appear ridiculous. They were seized upon with avidity by many of Washington's social elect, who felt slighted at not being asked to any of the functions arranged for the King and Queen, and written up in the press by a group of women reporters who felt that they had a prescriptive right to enter any door. American newspaper writers, as a rule, pride themselves upon taking an objective view of the news, but on this occasion a little group of women reporters gloried in the, fact, boasted of it, that personal pique and private prejudice were colouring their writings.
If the Ambassador and his wife had treated them better there would have been less offensive material in their columns, they said in plain words, This revelation of the part played by social bribery and blackmail in the newspaper world obviously did it little credit dnd called forth some pungent comments from the male news reporters. "It is surprising how many cats want to look closely at a Queen" wrote the head of the New York "Times" Bureau, who doubted whether the American public cared very much which Embassies coddled Washington's pampered press and which did not.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.