1922] on Journalism 471 



A last point as to the appointment of space in a newspaper 

 ■concerns the universal love of sport in all English-speaking countries, 

 and to a growing extent elsewhere. It is often said that newspapers 

 devote quite a disproportionate share of their space to sports and 

 games to the damage of serious interests, but if a newspaper is to 

 hold np a true mirror to public opinion, one can hardly say from 

 listening to the man in the street or even the girl in the shop to-day 

 that the reflexion is not true to life. This love of sport has always 

 been a marked feature of British life among the well-to-do, but it 

 was to some extent the indulgence of a class, because the other 

 classes had not the money or leisure to pursue it. Things have 

 changed. All conditions of men and women today have a different 

 conception of life and greater opportunities of realising it, so that 

 they take a far greater degree of interest in all the old sports and in 

 many a new one. To respond to this demand the newspapers 

 provide a sporting service of quite a different kind from that 

 which satisfied the 19th century. A daily newspaper in those days 

 had as a rule only one specialist in sport, and he was the racing 

 correspondent ; the rest was taken from an agency and written up in 

 the sub-editor's room. Now a big newspaper has a whole battalion 

 ■of experts dealing with sport in all its branches, and the general 

 reporter hides his diminished head. 



Whether the cult of games is not overdone in this country is 

 another matter, but the Press only answers to a universal call on 

 the part of the reading public which will not be denied. To imagine 

 that the ordinary man wishes to live, as Lord Rosebery once put 

 it, " on a blue book and a biscuit " is the pedantry of priggishness, 

 and, generally speaking, the wider and the more various the public 

 taste the better. If a man thinks in terms of football, or if a lad 

 dreams of the skill of Carpentier, he is not so likely to wallow in the 

 Serbonian bog with Lenin and Trotsky. He will take a healthy 

 view of life and the meaning of life, and I prefer the Crystal Palace 

 to the Kremlin. 



In all these varieties of the functions of a newspaper you will find 

 recurring one vexed question with regard to which no finality of 

 ■decision or practice has yet been reached. I refer to the anonymity 

 of the Press. It was, no doubt, the constant rule of earlier days ; it 

 was thought to be the golden rule. All sorts of reasons, good and 

 bad, are given to account for its having lasted so long. Historically 

 perhaps the most powerful justification lay in the penalties of the 

 Licensing Act of 1662, and on the force of the panic legislation of 

 1799, which treated " any house, room, or place, for the purpose of 

 reading books, pamphlets, newspapers, or other publications" as a 

 "disorderly house ;" and of the Newspaper Act of 1798, "for pre- 

 venting the mischief arising from newspapers being printed and 

 published by persons unknown, and for regulating them in other 

 respects." Within five years of starting The Times on New 



