478 Viscount Burnham [Jan. 27, 



front abroad. During the reign of Queen Victoria the Press was 

 constantly blamed for all the catastrophes and miscalculations of 

 foreign policy, and the very statesmen who were inspiring the writers 

 of leading articles, and the able editors who controlled them, were 

 the first to throw their blame for everything that went wrong on 

 the Press, even when speaking to the Queen herself. In every 

 volume of Victorian Memoirs there is passage after passage de- 

 nouncing The Times for making it impossible to conduct the foreign 

 policy of the country when first France and then Prussia was being 

 attacked in its columns ; yet all the while Ministers were competing* 

 for the privilege of inspiring its articles, and Sir William Harcourt, 

 then a young barrister, wrote to Lord Clarendon — himself one of 

 those who was always in contact with The Times — that " its exclu- 

 sive information derived from the Government is nothing less than 

 a letter of credit to the public authorising it to speak on behalf of 

 the Government." So it always has been, and so it always will be. 

 The truth is that the danger of newspaper dictation in foreign affairs 

 arises more often from the Minister's closet than from the editor's 

 room. It so happens that I can supply a good example of what I 

 mean from the admirable volume of Lord Salisbury's Life which has 

 recently been published. In a letter to Lord Bath of December 1877, 

 Lord Salisbury said : " I gather that you write under a firm belief 

 that the D.T., M.P., and P.M.G., represent in some fashion or 

 other the policy of the Government. That the opponents of the 

 Government should say so is only one of what I may call the 

 legitimate injustices of party warfare. But that anyone should 

 seriously think so perplexes me," and he goes on to talk about 

 " impudent pretensions." Well, I happen to know that at that time 

 Lord Rowton, then Mr. Montagu Cony, Lord Beaconsfield's private 

 secretary and alter ego, saw my father almost daily. He was the 

 liaison officer between the Prime Minister and the Daily Telegraph, so 

 that all the information published came from him, and was in an 

 immediate sense inspired by the head of the Government himself. 

 By this apologia, if it be one, I do not mean that the Press cannot do 

 even more harm than good by adding fuel to the flame of national 

 hatreds or by putting up smoke screens to obscure the real issue and 

 to darken the eternal verities. On the other hand, the same means 

 will avail to soften the asperities of personal bitterness and to cover 

 up the blunders of jealous statesmen and halting diplomatists fenc- 

 ing with one another for tactical advantage. The Press can do 

 more than any other power on earth to promote '• sweetness and 

 light " between the nations of the world if it will, and there is no 

 doubt that, as was said by the last Lord Derby but one of England, 

 that from every point of view, moral and material, " its greatest 

 interest is peace." Butler, in " Hudibras," paid a tribute to its 

 deity : — 



" Why then let's know it, quoth Apollo, 

 We'll beat a drum and they'll all follow." 



