WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 333 



newspapers should devote at least a column of their 

 space daily to shipping matters, which might be made 

 intensely readable as well as interesting, while of the 

 educational value of such reading there can be no 

 room for difference of opinion. The country possesses 

 many shipping papers, all valuable in their way, but 

 not accessible to the mass of people, nor would the 

 information they give, valuable as it is, be at all 

 intelligible to the ordinary reader unless it were care- 

 fully edited and often translated. If it be pleaded 

 that the pressure of the other news keeps shipping 

 matters out, I reply that in a properly edited paper 

 this could not be. I have repeatedly seen news of the 

 utmost interest and importance trampled upon, crowded 

 out, in order to give a full report of a spicy divorce 

 case or a breach of promise case or criminal prosecu- 

 tion, affecting at the most but a handful of people, 

 but put in from a mistaken idea that the human 

 interest in such drivel is what sells a paper. I do 

 not believe it, and if it were true, then it is the 

 mission, the duty of the newspaper, if it possesses a 

 tithe of the educational value claimed, and, I believe, 

 rightly claimed for it, to teach the people what they 

 ought to read by giving it to them. 



If only the public mind were awakened to the fact 

 of our utter dependence upon the sea for our living, 

 it is unthinkable to suppose that they would calmly 

 acquiesce in the fact of our Mercantile Marine being 

 so very largely manned and handled by foreigners as 

 it is. This question has been before the public now 

 for a good many years, but it is just as far from settle- 

 ment as ever. A great deal of money in the form of 

 subscriptions has been, as I think, wasted over this 



