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brings its own hysteria, and people in the public eye always suffer from the malice of their fellow men.
In Chaplin's case, the opprobrium was unmerited. When war was declared, Chaplin and other British members of the studio, had immediately volunteered. Nothing happened until Chaplin had pestered the British Ambassador in Washington several times; and then he was not passed by the army doctors.
None of his detractors paid any attention to the facts of the case, and the outcry in the press reached such serious proportions that Chaplin was forced to make a public statement. He did so with a logic and dignity that could not appeal to the prejudices of the war-minded, white-feather patriots, but did reach reasonable and just citizens. He asserted his willingness to serve if he were ever called upon to do so, derided the hysteria that supposed he was shirking when in fact he had not been accepted, and asserted his conviction that his present efforts to serve his country — he had nearly killed himself with the active part he had played in the Defence Loan Campaign — together with his film work, was of more value to the community than his presence in the trenches as a Tommy of poor physique.
He also pointed out sardonically that he could, had he wished, have enjoyed a vast amount of publicity at the time he had volunteered, but, he said with dignity, "All that I have done, all that I am doing, all that I intend to do, to prove my devotion to the cause of democracy, had not been and will not be publicly exploited."
As a result of this statement, letters poured in from all over the world, assuring him of the value of his work, both in the studio, and on the platform at the exhausting public meetings where he helped to raise enormous sums of money for the war effort. There was a universal demand that he be left in peace; and, in effect, he was never called up.
It was his first experience of press persecution, and he was appalled and angered by it. There was nothing then to tell him that it would be his portion for the rest of his life, growing more violent and more widespread as the years went by.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, in September, 1917, Chaplin married Mildred Harris, a fifteen year old film extra. Chaplin, volatile, emotional, and with an inward loneliness that nothing could assuage, was always immediately attracted by beautiful young women. Mildred Harris was very young and very beautiful, with shining golden hair and candid blue eyes, and Chaplin was immediately captured by her. But not even his intimates, not even his brother Syd, had realized that his infatuation was more than a momentary worship of the beauty he could never resist.