1922] on Journalism 477 



its existence only lasted four days. The British Press has the longest 

 tradition by which to mould its form and character, hut the United 

 States follows not far behind, and Canada in a smaller way has 

 followed the same path. Probably in no country in the world does 

 the newspaper exercise a power so far-reaching and universal as it 

 does in America, but it must always be remembered that relatively to 

 population the size of the reading public here for the daily press is 

 much bigger now than it was in the last century. In this respect 

 there is nothing like the difference there used to be between the two 

 greatest of the English-speaking countries, although, as I have pointed 

 out, our newspapers, coming from a common stock, have branched off 

 on separate lines of development, conditioned in great measure by 

 the divergence of our system of government and national organisa- 

 tion. On both sides of the Atlantic the growth of democracy has 

 thrown the Press into closer touch with the great mass of the people. 

 It is a commonplace to say that the power and prestige of the British 

 Parliament have greatly diminished in this century. In his 

 " Governance of England," Sir Sidney Low carries on Bagehot's 

 disquisition upon our Parliamentary arrangements, and clearly 

 explains how the Cabinet has gained what the House of Commons 

 has lost, whilst the House of Lords has largely ceased to count as 

 a law-making assembly. This process of decay, begun much earlier, 

 has been greatly accelerated by the explosions of the Great War, but 

 public opinion, or at least the opinion of large classes or groups of 

 the people, counts in solid value and effective sanction for as much 

 as, if not more than, it ever did. Public opinion is the sum total 

 of many more voices than it is of minds — vox populi is animus 

 ducendi — but the predominant minds must have their mode of 

 access, or, as it is so often termed now, their avenue of approach 

 to the mass vote, and to-day it can only have it through the columns 

 of the Press. Before 1885 it was possible to address the electors of 

 a county constituency in the coffee-room of an inn at a farmers' 

 ordinary. Before 1918 it was possible to gather together the electors 

 of a division in a few public halls, or even to canvass them from 

 house to house. With universal suffrage the old electioneering 

 methods have become obsolete, or rather it is not in that way or 

 even at the polling booth that public opinion finds its asolian vent 

 or its compelling force. Especially does this apply to the various 

 minorities, who are howled down at or thrown out of public 

 meetings, and thereafter voted out and, consequently, deprived of 

 representation on the governing bodies of the State. But if there 

 can be no free press except in a democracy, it likewise follows that 

 there can be no democracy without a free press. 



Public opinion does not operate only within the four seas or the 

 seven seas, and its influence on foreign policy is likely to be at least 

 as great, if not greater, than on domestic affairs, because internal 

 differences are often subjected to the necessity of showing*a united 



