1922] on Journalism -±65 



should nob have a party colour for party speeches or music the corre- 

 sponding artistic hue. 



I pass to another point. In seeking to explain the power of the 

 press the explanation of the eighteenth century still rings true. In 

 his " Thoughts on French Affairs " Edmund Burke says of news- 

 papers that " they are like a battery in which the stroke of one ball 

 produces no great effect, but the amount of continual repetition is 

 effective. Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story morning 

 and evening but for one twelvemonth and he will become our 

 master." There, no doubt, you have the secret of our power. Only 

 three years ago that great sailor, great patriot, and, may I add, great 

 actor, Admiral Lord Fisher, among his many aphorisms, serious and 

 gay, says, " the soul of journalism is. repetition." Pounding away, 

 to use Burke's metaphor, or, to vary it, to be able to prepare and to 

 some extent to provide "human nature's daily food," makes the 

 influence of the Press a simpler proposition to all who choose to 

 think it out. To the habitual reader it becomes an unconscious or 

 sub-conscious assimilation of ideas which gradually becomes part of 

 his normal attitude of mind. This is constantly denied. One hears 

 it Haid repeatedly that the " editorial we " carries much less of its old 

 potency in the public affairs of the country. It may be so, but even 

 if the warning or the exhortation of the leading article has lost some 

 of its force and much of its fervour in these days of self-doubt and 

 self-restraint, there is a make-weight in the other parts of the paper. 

 Mr. Robert Donald said not long since, " Let any who wish write the 

 editorials, so long as I have the news columns to handle." No doubt 

 the relative proportion of actual news collected from all the ends of 

 •the earth by news agencies and special correspondents is far larger 

 than it was in the early days of telegraphic transmission, and yet 

 more so, obviously, than when William Howard Russell had to send 

 all his descriptions of the Crimean War by the mail-ship to France 

 and Italy, and thence by a primitive train service. To-day a great 

 newspaper has a service of special correspondents more numerous 

 and more efficient than the diplomatic corps of many a European 

 State. Envoys are sent on special missions to every nerve centre of 

 human interests which for the time being is the ganglion of 'the fate 

 of nations, and at no period of history has the daily record not only 

 of events but of the great lines of human conduct been anything 

 like so full or so accurate. Excepting in such a " disturbed area " as 

 Soviet Russia or Turkey in Asia, the facilities for the gathering and 

 despatch of news are rapidly reaching everywhere the same standards 

 of mechanical efficiency, and certainly the writers who are doing the 

 work are equal to any of those who have gone before. Sir Valentine 

 Chirol, Mr. Perceval Landon, Colonel Repington, Sir Philip Gibbs 

 and Sir Percival Phillips are wonderful journalists, each in his own 

 style. In addition to the regular hands, newspapers have the call of 

 such pens for special purposes as those of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, 



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