488 



The Reviilw of Reviews. 



words, it is a mutter of ailiun, not mtrel)- a chorus 

 to contemporary life expressing; the comments of 

 passive witnesses. Stead was splendidly the journalist 

 as a man of action holding his own with men of action, 

 from the top down in all the other spheres. He was the 

 only journalist who has been an international figure in 

 his own right apart from any particular newspaper. 

 He was not only a man of genius ; he was possessed by 

 ideas as only a man of strong genius can be. That was 

 his hindrance in several wavs, but it was that which 



made him. One might venture to say without bein:; 

 very wide of the mark that his place in the practice 

 of journalism corresponded to that of Mr. Gladstone 

 in the practice of politics. His grave is where he 

 might have chosen it, midway betvi'een England 

 and America, under the full stream of their inter- 

 course ; and I cannot but think that his death wa^ 

 in accordance with his view of things. It attested 

 the -great realities that underlie the common move- 

 ments of our life. 



J. A. SPENDER in 



My mind goes back to a friendship with Mr. Stead 

 extending over twenty-five years, and I find it impos- 

 sible to realise that he is no more with us. I saw him 

 the day before he sailed, and he was full of his coming 

 tour in America and the " splendid chance " of going 

 over in the Titanic on her first voyage. His main object 

 was to address an International Peace meeting, at 

 which, I think, President 'I'aft was to have been 

 pre.sent ; but, characteristically, he had planned to 

 cover a large part of the American continent in a fort- 

 night's journey, and when I left him he was still debat- 

 ing whether or not he would go on to San Franci.sco. 



I do not think it will be possible for any historian 

 hereafter to write the history of these times without a 

 frequent mention of Stead's name. Some of the 

 younger generation had grown to look upon him — 

 unfairly — as a spent volcano, and he certainly culti- 

 vated an abundant crop of the things that the unwise 

 call " fads " ; but his mind was as alert and ingenious 

 as ever, and he had established a quite extraordinary 

 connection with foreign countries and movements. No 

 English journalists, and very few English public men, 

 were as well known as Stead in the United States, 

 Germany, and Russia. He seemed in his last years to 

 be perpetually flitting from capital to capital on 

 informal missions, interviewing sovereigns and states- 

 men, collecting views and facts w-hich escape diplo- 

 macy, pouring out an unceasing stream of journalism, 

 of which, unfortunately, a large part was published 

 elsewhere than in this country. .Stead was a superb 

 special correspondent, and I do not think that in recent 

 times there has been a finer piece of journalism than 

 his account of his mission to Constantinople, when he 

 interviewed the Switan and spoke faithfully to the 

 C"ommittee. It had that peculiar blend of the pic- 

 turesque and the practical, and that remarkable faculty 

 for seeing complicated things in clear and positive 

 outline, which characterised his work at its best. 



But the present generation cannot realise the power 

 th;it he was in the eighties. He had invented a new 

 style of journalism, swayed the decisions of Cabinets, 

 almost made himself a party in the country. He had 

 roused the public with the " Truth About the Na\v," 

 been largclv responsible for the despatch of Gnidon 

 to the Soudun, protested vehemently and successfully 

 when the country was on the \erge of going to war 

 with Russia about the Penjdeh incident, campaigned 

 unceasingly and successfully against the exclusion of 



the "Westminster Gazette." 



the frish members from the Imperial Parliament in 

 the Home Rule Bill of 1886, risked all and been landed 

 in gaol for his crusade against " the maiden tribute of 

 Modern Habylon." His creed was eclectic, and. as his 

 readers said in those days, you never knew where he 

 would break out next. He was Peace-man and Impe- 

 rialist, Jingo and humanitarian combined. Almost it 

 might be said that — with the aid of his brilliant lieu- 

 tenant, Mr, F, E, Garratt — he invented Cecil Rhodes, 

 so far as the British public were concerned, and the 

 friendship of the two men never wavered, though Stead 

 was afterwards the most vehement of pro-Boers. 

 There was no movement or cause to which his mind 

 was not accessible, and a stream of callers from all over 

 the world passed daily through his office, claiming 

 s}mpathy and interest for the latest invention for 

 extracting gold from sea-water, the latest intimations 

 from " Borderland," the newest way of federating the 

 Empire, the next scheme to lay before the Hague 

 Conference, As you watched him through a normal 

 day, you wondered when he could find time to put pen 

 to paper, let alone to keep that incessant stream of 

 journalism flowing in English and American news- 

 papers. But he was a demon for work, and with a pen 

 .in his hand or a shorthand-writer to dictate to, his 

 speed was enormous. Never have I known him so busy 

 as not to find time for patient listening to the story of 

 any human being in distress, and no one so readily 

 gave his sympatln or loosened his purse-strings. 



The solid Englishman is puzzled by a man of this 

 temperament, and I have often wondered from what 

 forbears he got his more than Celtic fervour. But 

 with it all, he was a man of extraordinary precision 

 and grasp of detail. Hardly ever have I known him 

 wrong about a fact, and his power of reducing masses 

 of detail to brief and lucid statements was unequalled. 

 Give him the biggest Blue-honk, and he would have the 

 heart out of it in half an hour and a luminous summary, 

 omitting nothing of any importance, going to press 

 within an hour. His articles were like the hewing of a 

 straight path through a tangled forest. There might be 

 woods and bogs to right and left, but he troubled 

 nothing about them, so long as his own path was clear, 

 liis talk made much more allowance than his writing 

 for the complexity of things, and there was no better 

 critic in London of other people's views. Pose a ques 

 tion, and he would talk it out from a dozen points ol 

 view with the keenest sense of its complications. Hl> 



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