474 Viscount Burnham [Jan. 27, 



and practice, leading articles are not the product of a single pen in 

 any important journal ; they are the outcome of consultation aud, 

 often, of compromise between the editor and the writer, or it may 

 be the result of an editorial council, in which in these days, especially, 

 the managing partner or the managing director will certainly have 

 a big say. There is nothing new in all this ; on the contrary, it is 

 the uninterrupted tradition of British journalism. Leonard Courtney, 

 afterwards Lord Courtney, used to say that he never wrote his 

 leading articles in T/te Times, which he served for many years. 

 " They weren't mine,'' he said, " they were Delane's." Instructions 

 are given by the editor to the writer, and necessarily so, because the 

 editor has at his command the general sum of information brought 

 from many quarters, which enables him properly to judge the entire 

 issue, whereas the writer has only his personal views to guide him. 

 In such a combination of abilities there is nothing crooked or unfair ; 

 on the contrary, it is only thereby that efficiency and correctness can be 

 maintained. Having regard to the numberless channels of inquiry 

 and information and the nature of the co-ordinating and unifying 

 control which I have indicated as the main factors in the conduct of 

 the modern daily journal, you will, I think, realise the force of the 

 remark made the other day to two continents by the late Lord 

 Bryce — that great publicist whom we all lament for the sterling 

 quality of his learned service — that " the greatest of all sources for 

 the present historian are the newspapers." There were certain points, 

 he said, which the historian would have to regard in turning to 

 newspapers. They were : — What are the means of knowledge of the 

 newspaper ? what is the responsibility under which it published 

 statements ? and whether it does or does not wish to state the truth ; 

 and for what class of people does it write ? Questions such as these 

 have a Socratic irony about them which make them a little difficult 

 to answer without begging them. When I was a Member of 

 Parliament — I am now on a reduced scale — I heard a story that 

 Mr. Gladstone once said that no matter what the subject under 

 discussion there was sure to rise up a man from the back benches 

 who knew all about it, and this may be even more true of the 

 House in which I sit now. The world of the Press is much the same, 

 except that in a newspaper office these things are settled by prevision 

 and organisation. The necessities of the case require that there shall 

 always be some member of the staff who, if he do not, in the words 

 of the old educational formula, know something of everything and 

 everything of something, has at least special knowledge of some 

 popular branch of knowledge ranging from golf to archaeology. 

 What the journalist requires is not merely a bowing acquaintance 

 with art and science, but such a friendly understanding as will give 

 at least a two-power standard of House of Commons expression. 

 Lord Acton is said to have known more and written less than any 

 historian of his time. Every scrap of learning, on the other hand, 



