292 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



" five-sixths of the people in this country allow their news- 

 papers to do their thinking for them." It would be more true 

 to say that five-sixths of the people do their own (political) 

 thinking, and either choose a newspaper because it expresses 

 their views, or take a newspaper because of its news service 

 and ignore its political attitude. 



Moreover, there is reason to believe that the propagandist 

 power of the Press is diminishing. Leading articles are certainly 

 less effective than they were — with the single exception of the 

 Morning Post and Manchester Guardian, both newspapers of 

 limited circulation — and the fact is instructive. A newspaper 

 is, after all, a business proposition ; it cannot afford to offend its 

 readers, or its revenue from both circulation and advertisements 

 will drop. But the more readers it has, the more likely it is to 

 offend them if it takes a strong line on any subject ; the result 

 is that a journal with a very large circulation is tempted to 

 avoid controversy if possible, and if controversy is inevitable, 

 to avoid taking the unpopular side ; like Mr. Pickwick, it 

 prefers to shout with the largest mob. 



To disguise its lack of political principle, the popular news- 

 paper devotes more space to non-political matters ; and in 

 order to attract a large number of less critical readers, it indulges 

 in sensation and " stunts." The Daily Express, for instance, 

 recently suggested that Sir E. Rutherford's experiments on the 

 atom might blow up the earth. Probably few of its half- 

 million, or more, readers had ever heard of Sir E. Rutherford, 

 and perhaps fewer still knew anything of the rudiments of 

 chemistry ; but the end of the world has been foretold and 

 postponed so often by divines that a healthy scepticism appar- 

 ently saved the populace from wrecking the laboratory at 

 Cambridge. It was" a good story," but it did not bite. The 

 simple truth is that public opinion takes a heavy discount off 

 Press polemics and predictions. It reads these things, as it 

 reads the popular novel of the day ; but they carry no 

 conviction. 



But the ultimate reason why the newspaper fails as a pro- 

 pagandist is that the newspaper has to sell its goods, whereas 

 propaganda escapes the laws of economics altogether. Martyr- 

 dom is always the most effective form of propaganda, because 

 the man who will die for his belief is presumably convinced of 

 its truth ; whereas the newspaper has still to come out to- 

 morrow. In the long-run, therefore, propaganda depends on 

 the individual who will stake everything on the cause for which 

 he stands ; the Press may help or hinder, but it cannot decide, 

 for it must follow rather than lead the general public. 



