1922] on Journalism 473 



their fashionable acquaintances from the West-end of the town. It 

 was said that in The Times office it was a matter of etiquette 

 that no leader writer who crossed another in the passage passed 

 the time of day to him, for each was, at any rate by a social fiction, 

 supposed to be ignorant of the other's professional existence. In the 

 middle of the last century The Times staff comprised a remarkable 

 body of literary men, yet even to their contemporaries their names 

 were not even shadows, and so their work is not so much forgotten \ 

 it was never identified or acknowledged. This rule applied not only 

 to leader writers but to foreign correspondents, and even to war 

 correspondents. It is true that in regard to the latter effective 

 secrecy was impossible, because their reports were personal, and they 

 had perforce, although not to the same extent as under the Official 

 Secrets Act or the Defence of the Realm Act, to be held individually 

 responsible for them ; but they did not write over their own names. 

 Curiously enough public men, who constantly contributed letters to 

 the editor on public questions, were sometimes better known from 

 norns- de-plume, or, as the French say, noms-de-guerre, than were the 

 regular members of the staff. Sir William Harcourt was widely 

 known to write on the authority of " Historicus," and the late 

 Mr. Higgins wrote as " Jacob Omnium." Thus, following the early 

 precedents of Steele and Addison, the pseudonym has often been a 

 more famous name than the man's own. The rule of anonymity is 

 by no means abandoned. It continues in the leading aiticle and 

 for the most part in the dramatic and musical criticism, but even in 

 the latter the tendency is to modify it by the signed article some- 

 times in place of the other, at other times next to it. In the smaller 

 papers, just as is the custom in practically the whole of the 

 American press, the leading articles are reduced to the length of one 

 or two paragraphs, even though they may be multiplied in number. 



It is probable, although by no means certain, that the leading 

 article has lost some of its influence as compared with the personal 

 call of the signed work. I should be inclined to say that the 

 relative value is different. In the case of the regular reader the 

 unsigned brings to bear the steady pressuie of a consistent policy ; 

 for the occasional reader it is the force of the name that makes the 

 instant effect, fleeting though it may be. It has often been con- 

 tended, even by those who ought to know better, that for the 

 purpose of identification, or shall I say popular valuation, every 

 article in a newspaper ought to be signed. This does not touch the 

 legal side of the issue, which is sufficiently clear, but the moral side, 

 which is always indeterminate. Henry Labouchere was very insistent 

 upon this topic. He wrote over his own name, except in the days 

 when he was correspondent of the Daily Xews in Paris during the 

 siege of 1870, and he constantly inveighed against the misleading of 

 public opinion by the use of the " editorial we." He judged, how- 

 ever, exclusively from his own example, because, as a matter of fact 



