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Title: The Free Press
Author: Hilaire Belloc
Release Date: March 19, 2006 [eBook #18018]
Language: English
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THE FREE PRESS
by
HILAIRE BELLOC
London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Ruskin House 40 Museum Street W.C 1
First published in 1918
(All rights reserved)
DEDICATION
KINGS LAND,
SHIPLEY, HORSHAM.
_October 14, 1917._
MY DEAR ORAGE,
I dedicate this little essay to you not only because "The New Age"
(which is your paper) published it in its original form, but much more
because you were, I think, the pioneer, in its modern form at any
rate, of the Free Press in this country. I well remember the days when
one used to write to "The New Age" simply because one knew it to be
the only paper in which the truth with regard to our corrupt politics,
or indeed with regard to any powerful evil, could be told. That is now
some years ago; but even to-day there is only one other paper in
London of which this is true, and that is the "New Witness." Your
paper and that at present edited by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton are the
fullest examples of the Free Press we have.
It is significant, I think, that these two papers differ entirely in
the philosophies which underlie their conduct and in the social ends
at which they aim. In other words, they differ entirely in religion
which is the ultimate spring of all political action. There is perhaps
no single problem of any importance in private or in public morals
which the one would not attempt to solve in a fashion different from,
and usually antagonistic to, the other. Yet we discover these two
papers with their limited circulation, their lack of advertisement
subsidy, their restriction to a comparatively small circle, possessing
a power which is not only increasing but has long been quite out of
proportion to their numerical status.
Things happen because of words printed in "The New Age" and the "New
Witness." That is less and less true of what I have called the
official press. The phenomenon is worth analysing. Its intellectual
interest alone will arrest the attention of any future historian. Here
is a force numerically quite small, lacking the one great obvious
power of our time (which is the power to bribe), rigidly boycotted--so
much so that it is hardly known outside the circle of its immediate
adherents and quite unknown abroad. Yet this force is doing work--is
creating--at a moment when almost everything else is marking time; and
the work it is doing grows more and more apparent.
The reason is, of course, the principle which was a commonplace with
antiquity, though it was almost forgotten in the last modern
generation, that truth has a power of its own. Mere indignation
against organized falsehood, mere revolt against it, is creative.
It is the thesis of this little essay, as you will see, that the Free
Press will succeed in its main object which is the making of the truth
known.
There was a moment, I confess, when I would not have written so
hopefully.
Some years ago, especially after I had founded the "Eye-Witness," I
was, in the tedium of the effort, half convinced that success could
not be obtained. It is a mood which accompanies exile. To produce that
mood is the very object of the boycott to which the Free Press is
subjected.
But I have lived, in the last five years, to see that this mood was
false. It is now clear that steady work in the exposure of what is
evil, whatever forces are brought to bear against that exposure, bears
fruit. That is the reason I have written the few pages printed here:
To convince men that even to-day one can do something in the way of
political reform, and that even to-day there is room for something of
free speech.
I say at the close of these pages that I do not believe the new spirit
we have produced will lead to any system of self-government, economic
or political. I think the decay has gone too far for that. In this I
may be wrong; it is but an opinion with regard to the future. On the
other matter I have experience and immediate example before me, and I
am certain that the battle for free political discussion is now won.
Mere knowledge of our public evils, economic and political, will
henceforward spread; and though we must suffer the external
consequences of so prolonged a regime of lying, the lies are now known
to be lies. True expression, though it should bear no immediate and
practical fruit, is at least now guaranteed a measure of freedom, and
the coming evils which the State must still endure will at least not
be endured in silence. Therefore it was worth while fighting.
Very sincerely yours,
H. BELLOC.
The Free Press
I PROPOSE to discuss in what follows the evil of the great
modern Capitalist Press, its function in vitiating and
misinforming opinion and in putting power into ignoble
hands; its correction by the formation of small independent
organs, and the probably increasing effect of these last.
I
About two hundred years ago a number of things began to appear in
Europe which were the fruit of the Renaissance and of the Reformation
combined: Two warring twins.
These things appeared first of all in England, because England was the
only province of Europe wherein the old Latin tradition ran side by
side with the novel effects of protestantism. But for England the
great schism and heresy of the sixteenth century, already dissolving
to-day, would long ago have died. It would have been confined for
some few generations to those outer Northern parts of the Continent
which had never really digested but had only received in some
mechanical fashion the strong meat of Rome. It would have ceased with,
or shortly after, the Thirty Years War.
It was the defection of the English Crown, the immense booty rapidly
obtained by a few adventurers, like the Cecils and Russells, and a
still smaller number of old families, like the Howards, which put
England, with all its profound traditions and with all its organic
inheritance of the great European thing, upon the side of the Northern
Germanies. It was inevitable, therefore, that in England the fruits
should first appear, for here only was there deep soil.
That fruit upon which our modern observation has been most fixed was
_Capitalism_.
Capitalism proceeded from England and from the English Reformation;
but it was not fully alive until the early eighteenth century. In the
nineteenth it matured.
Another cognate fruit was what to-day we call _Finance_, that is, the
domination of the State by private Capitalists who, taking advantage
of the necessities of the State, fix an increasing mortgage upon the
State and work perpetually for fluidity, anonymity, and
irresponsibility in their arrangements. It was in England, again, that
this began and vigorously began with what I think was the first true
"National Debt"; a product contemporary in its origins with industrial
Capitalism.
Another was that curious and certainly ephemeral vagary of the human
mind which has appeared before now in human history, which is called
"Sophistry," and which consists in making up "systems" to explain the
world; in contrast with Philosophy which aims at the answering of
questions, the solution of problems and the final establishment of the
truth.
But most interesting of all just now, though but a minor fruit, is the
thing called "The Press." It also began to arise contemporaneously
with Capitalism and Finance: it has grown with them and served them.
It came to the height of its power at the same modern moment as did
they.
Let us consider what exactly it means: then we shall the better
understand what its development has been.
II
"The Press" means (for the purpose of such an examination) the
dissemination by frequently and regularly printed sheets (commonly
daily sheets) of (1) news and (2) suggested ideas.
These two things are quite distinct in character and should be
regarded separately, though they merge in this: that false ideas are
suggested by false news and especially by news which is false through
suppression.
First, of News:--
News, that is, information with regard to those things which affect us
but which are not within our own immediate view, is necessary to the
life of the State.
The obvious, the extremely cheap, the _universal_ means of propagating
it, is by word of mouth.
A man has seen a thing; many men have seen a thing. They testify to
that thing, and others who have heard them repeat their testimony. The
Press thrust into the midst of this natural system (which is still
that upon which all reasonable men act, whenever they can, in matters
most nearly concerning them) two novel features, both of them
exceedingly corrupting. In the first place, it gave to the printed
words a _rapidity of extension_ with which repeated spoken words could
not compete. In the second place, it gave them a _mechanical
similarity_ which was the very opposite to the marks of healthy human
news.
I would particularly insist upon this last point. It is little
understood and it is vital.
If we want to know what to think of a fire which has taken place many
miles away, but which affects property of our own, we listen to the
accounts of dozens of men. We rapidly and instinctively differentiate
between these accounts according to the characters of the witnesses.
Equally instinctively, we counter-test these accounts by the inherent
probabilities of the situation.
An honest and sober man tells us that the roof of the house fell in.
An imaginative fool, who is also a swindler, assures us that he later
saw the roof standing. We remember that the roof was of iron girders
covered with wood, and draw this conclusion: That the framework still
stands, but that the healing fell through in a mass of blazing
rubbish. Our common sense and our knowledge of the situation incline
us rather to the bad than to the good witness, and we are right. But
the Press cannot of its nature give a great number of separate
testimonies. These would take too long to collect, and would be too
expensive to collect. Still less is it able to deliver the weight of
each. It, therefore, presents us, even at its best when the testimony
is not tainted, no more than one crude affirmation. This one relation
is, as I have said, further propagated unanimously and with extreme
rapidity. Instead of an organic impression formed at leisure in the
comparison of many human sources, the reader obtains a mechanical one.
At the same moment myriads of other men receive this same impression.
Their adherence to it corroborates his own. Even therefore when the
disseminator of the news, that is, the owner of the newspaper, has no
special motive for lying, the message is conveyed in a vitiated and
inhuman form. Where he has a motive for lying (as he usually has) his
lie can outdo any merely spoken or written truth.
If this be true of news and of its vitiation through the Press, it is
still truer of opinions and suggested ideas.
Opinions, above all, we judge by the personalities of those who
deliver them: by voice, tone, expression, and known character. The
Press eliminates three-quarters of all by which opinion may be judged.
And yet it presents the opinion with the more force. The idea is
presented in a sort of impersonal manner that impresses with peculiar
power because it bears a sort of detachment, as though it came from
some authority too secure and superior to be questioned. It is
suddenly communicated to thousands. It goes unchallenged, unless by
some accident another controller of such machines will contradict it
and can get his contradiction read by the same men as have read the
first statement.
These general characters were present in the Press even in its
infancy, when each news-sheet still covered but a comparatively small
circle; when distribution was difficult, and when the audience
addressed was also select and in some measure able to criticize
whatever was presented to it. But though present they had no great
force; for the adventure of a newspaper was limited. The older method
of obtaining news was still remembered and used. The regular readers
of anything, paper or book, were few, and those few cared much more
for the quality of what they read than for its amount. Moreover, they
had some means of judging its truth and value.
In this early phase, moreover, the Press was necessarily highly
diverse. One man could print and sell profitably a thousand copies of
his version of a piece of news, of his opinions, or those of his
clique. There were hundreds of other men who, if they took the pains,
had the means to set out a rival account and a rival opinion. We shall
see how, as Capitalism grew, these safeguards decayed and the bad
characters described were increased to their present enormity.
III
Side by side with the development of Capitalism went a change in the
Press from its primitive condition to a worse. The development of
Capitalism meant that a smaller and a yet smaller number of men
commanded the means of production and of distribution whereby could be
printed and set before a large circle a news-sheet fuller than the old
model. When distribution first changed with the advent of the railways
the difference from the old condition was accentuated, and there arose
perhaps one hundred, perhaps two hundred "organs," as they were
called, which, in this country and the Lowlands of Scotland, told men
what their proprietors chose to tell them, both as to news and as to
opinion. The population was still fairly well spread; there were a
number of local capitals; distribution was not yet so organized as to
permit a paper printed as near as Birmingham, even, to feel the
competition of a paper printed in London only 100 miles away. Papers
printed as far from London, as York, Liverpool or Exeter were the
more independent.
Further the mass of men, though there was more intelligent reading
(and writing, for that matter) than there is to-day, had not acquired
the habit of daily reading.
It may be doubted whether even to-day the mass of men (in the sense of
the actual majority of adult citizens) have done so. But what I mean
is that in the time of which I speak (the earlier part, and a portion
of the middle, of the nineteenth century), there was no reading of
papers as a regular habit by those who work with their hands. The
papers were still in the main written for those who had leisure; those
who for the most part had some travel, and those who had a smattering,
at least, of the Humanities.
The matter appearing in the newspapers was often _written by_ men of
less facilities. But the people who wrote them, wrote them under the
knowledge that their audience was of the sort I describe. To this day
in the healthy remnant of our old State, in the country villages, much
of this tradition survives. The country folk in my own neighbourhood
can read as well as I can; but they prefer to talk among themselves
when they are at leisure, or, at the most, to seize in a few moments
the main items of news about the war; they prefer this, I say, as a
habit of mind, to the poring over square yards of printed matter which
(especially in the Sunday papers) are now food for their fellows in
the town. That is because in the country a man has true neighbours,
whereas the towns are a dust of isolated beings, mentally (and often
physically) starved.
IV
Meanwhile, there had appeared in connection with this new institution,
"The Press," a certain factor of the utmost importance: Capitalist
also in origin, and, therefore, inevitably exhibiting all the
poisonous vices of Capitalism as its effect flourished from more to
more. This factor was _subsidy through advertisement_.
At first the advertisement was not a subsidy. A man desiring to let a
thing be known could let it be known much more widely and immediately
through a newspaper than in any other fashion. He paid the newspaper
to publish the thing that he wanted known, as that he had a house to
let, or wine to sell.
But it was clear that this was bound to lead to the paradoxical state
of affairs from which we began to suffer in the later nineteenth
century. A paper had for its revenue not only what people paid in
order to obtain it, but also what people paid in order to get their
wares or needs known through it. It, therefore, could be profitably
produced at a cost greater than its selling price. Advertisement
revenue made it possible for a man to print a paper at a cost of 2d.
and sell it at 1d.
In the simple and earlier form of advertisement the extent and nature
of the circulation was the only thing considered by the advertiser,
and the man who printed the newspaper got more and more profit as he
extended that circulation by giving more reading matter for a
better-looking paper and still selling it further and further below
cost price.
When it was discovered how powerful the effect of suggestion upon the
readers of advertisements could be, especially over such an audience
as our modern great towns provide (a chaos, I repeat, of isolated
minds with a lessening personal experience and with a lessening
community of tradition), the value of advertising space rapidly rose.
It became a more and more tempting venture to "start a newspaper," but
at the same time, the development of capitalism made that venture more
and more hazardous. It was more and more of a risky venture to start a
new great paper even of a local sort, for the expense got greater and
greater, and the loss, if you failed, more and more rapid and serious.
Advertisement became more and more the basis of profit, and the giving
in one way and another of more and more for the 1d. or the 1/2d.
became the chief concern of the now wealthy and wholly capitalistic
newspaper proprietor.
Long before the last third of the nineteenth century a newspaper, if
it was of large circulation, was everywhere a venture or a property
dependent wholly upon its advertisers. It had ceased to consider its
public save as a bait for the advertiser. It lived (_in this phase_)
entirely on its advertisement columns.
V
Let us halt at this phase in the development of the thing to consider
certain other changes which were on the point of appearance, and why
they were on the point of appearance.
In the first place, if advertisement had come to be the stand-by of a
newspaper, the Capitalist owning the sheet would necessarily consider
his revenue from advertisement before anything else. He was indeed
_compelled_ to do so unless he had enormous revenues from other
sources, and ran his paper as a luxury costing a vast fortune a year.
For in this industry the rule is either very great profits or very
great and rapid losses--losses at the rate of £100,000 at least in a
year where a great daily paper is concerned.
He was compelled then to respect his advertisers as his paymasters. To
that extent, therefore, his power of giving true news and of printing
sound opinion was limited, even though his own inclinations should
lean towards such news and such opinion.
An individual newspaper owner might, for instance, have the greatest
possible dislike for the trade in patent medicines. He might object to
the swindling of the poor which is the soul of that trade. He might
himself have suffered acute physical pain through the imprudent
absorption of one of those quack drugs. But he certainly could not
print an article against them, nor even an article describing how they
were made, without losing a great part of his income, directly; and,
perhaps, indirectly, the whole of it, from the annoyance caused to
other advertisers, who would note his independence and fear friction
in their own case. He would prefer to retain his income, persuade his
readers to buy poison, and remain free (personally) from touching the
stuff he recommended for pay.
As with patent medicines so with any other matter whatsoever that was
advertised. However bad, shoddy, harmful, or even treasonable the
matter might be, the proprietor was always at the choice of publishing
matter which did not affect _him_, and saving his fortune, or refusing
it and jeopardizing his fortune. He chose the former course.
In the second place, there was an even more serious development.
Advertisement having become the stand-by of the newspaper the large
advertiser (as Capitalism developed and the controls became fewer and
more in touch one with the other) could not but regard his "giving" of
an advertisement as something of a favour.
There is always this psychological, or, if you will, artistic element
in exchange.
In pure Economics exchange is exactly balanced by the respective
advantages of the exchangers; just as in pure dynamics you have the
parallelogram of forces. In the immense complexity of the real world
material, friction, and a million other things affect the ideal
parallelogram of forces; and in economics other conscious passions
besides those of mere avarice affect exchange: there are a million
half-conscious and sub-conscious motives at work as well.
The large advertiser still _mainly_ paid for advertisement according
to circulation, but he also began to be influenced by less direct
intentions. He would not advertise in papers which he thought might by
their publication of opinion ultimately hurt Capitalism as a whole;
still less in those whose opinions might affect his own private
fortune adversely. Stupid (like all people given up to gain), he was
muddle-headed about the distinction between a large circulation and a
circulation small, but appealing to the rich. He would refuse
advertisements of luxuries to a paper read by half the wealthier class
if he had heard in the National Liberal Club, or some such place, that
the paper was "in bad taste."
Not only was there this negative power in the hands of the advertiser,
that of refusing the favour or patronage of his advertisements, there
was also a positive one, though that only grew up later.
The advertiser came to see that he could actually dictate policy and
opinion; and that he had also another most powerful and novel weapon
in his hand, which was the _suppression_ of news.
We must not exaggerate this element. For one thing the power
represented by the great Capitalist Press was a power equal with that
of the great advertisers. For another, there was no clear-cut
distinction between the Capitalism that owned newspapers and the
Capitalism that advertised. The same man who owned "The Daily Times"
was a shareholder in Jones's Soap or Smith's Pills. The man who
gambled and lost on "The Howl" was at the same time gambling and
winning on a bucket-shop advertised in "The Howl." There was no
antagonism of class interest one against the other, and what was more
they were of the same kind and breed. The fellow that got rich quick
in a newspaper speculation--or ended in jail over it--was exactly the
same kind of man as he who bought a peerage out of a "combine" in
music halls or cut his throat when his bluff in Indian silver was
called. The type is the common modern type. Parliament is full of it,
and it runs newspapers only as one of its activities--all of which
need the suggestion of advertisement.
The newspaper owner and the advertiser, then, were intermixed. But on
the balance the advertising interest being wider spread was the
stronger, and what you got was a sort of imposition, often quite
conscious and direct, of advertising power over the Press; and this
was, as I have said, not only negative (that was long obvious) but, at
last, positive.
Sometimes there is an open battle between the advertiser and the
proprietor, especially when, as is the case with framers of artificial
monopolies, both combatants are of a low, cunning, and unintelligent
type. Minor friction due to the same cause is constantly taking place.
Sometimes the victory falls to the newspaper proprietor, more often to
the advertiser--never to the public.
So far, we see the growth of the Press marked by these
characteristics. (1) It falls into the hands of a very few rich men,
and nearly always of men of base origin and capacities. (2) It is, in
their hands, a mere commercial enterprise. (3) It is economically
supported by advertisers who can in part control it, but these are of
the same Capitalist kind, in motive and manner, with the owners of the
papers. Their power does not, therefore, clash in the main with that
of the owners, but the fact that advertisement makes a paper, has
created a standard of printing and paper such that no one--save at a
disastrous loss--can issue regularly to large numbers news and opinion
which the large Capitalist advertisers disapprove.
There would seem to be for any independent Press no possible economic
basis, because the public has been taught to expect for 1d. what it
costs 3d. to make--the difference being paid by the advertisement
subsidy.
But there is now a graver corruption at work even than this always
negative and sometimes positive power of the advertiser.
It is the advent of the great newspaper owner as the true governing
power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the
officials in the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them,
imposing policies, and, in general, usurping sovereignty--all this
secretly and without responsibility.
It is the chief political event of our time and is the peculiar mark
of this country to-day. Its full development has come on us suddenly
and taken us by surprise in the midst of a terrible war. It was
undreamt of but a few years ago. It is already to-day the capital fact
of our whole political system. A Prime Minister is made or deposed by
the owner of a group of newspapers, not by popular vote or by any
other form of open authority.
No policy is attempted until it is ascertained that the newspaper
owner is in favour of it. Few are proffered without first consulting
his wishes. Many are directly ordered by him. We are, if we talk in
terms of real things (as men do in their private councils at
Westminster) mainly governed to-day, not even by the professional
politicians, nor even by those who pay them money, but by whatever
owner of a newspaper trust is, for the moment, the most unscrupulous
and the most ambitious.
How did such a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire
into before going further to examine its operation and the possible
remedy.
VI
During all this development of the Press there has been present,
_first_, as a doctrine plausible and arguable; _next_, as a tradition
no longer in touch with reality; _lastly_, as an hypocrisy still
pleading truth, a certain definition of the functions of the Press; a
doctrine which we must thoroughly grasp before proceeding to the
nature of the Press in these our present times.
This doctrine was that the Press was an _organ of opinion_--that is,
an expression of the public thought and will.
Why was this doctrine originally what I have called it, "plausible and
arguable"? At first sight it would seem to be neither the one nor the
other.
A man controlling a newspaper can print any folly or falsehood he
likes. _He_ is the dictator: not his public. _They_ only receive.
Yes: but he is limited by his public.
If I am rich enough to set up a big rotary printing press and print in
a million copies of a daily paper the _news_ that the Pope has become
a Methodist, or the _opinion_ that tin-tacks make a very good
breakfast food, my newspaper containing such news and such an opinion
would obviously not touch the general thought and will at all. No
one, outside the small catholic minority, wants to hear about the
Pope; and no one, Catholic or Muslim, will believe that he has become
a Methodist. No one alive will consent to eat tin-tacks. A paper
printing stuff like that is free to do so, the proprietor could
certainly get his employees, or most of them, to write as he told
them. But his paper would stop selling.
It is perfectly clear that the Press in itself simply represents the
news which its owners desire to print and the opinions which they
desire to propagate; and this argument against the Press has always
been used by those who are opposed to its influence at any moment.
But there is no smoke without fire, and the element of truth in the
legend that the Press "represents" opinion lies in this, that there is
a _limit_ of outrageous contradiction to known truths beyond which it
cannot go without heavy financial loss through failure of circulation,
which is synonymous with failure of power. When people talked of the
newspaper owners as "representing public opinion" there was a shadow
of reality in such talk, absurd as it seems to us to-day. Though the
doctrine that newspapers are "organs of public opinion" was (like
most nineteenth century so-called "Liberal" doctrines) falsely stated
and hypocritical, it had that element of truth about it--at least, in
the earlier phase of newspaper development. There is even a certain
savour of truth hanging about it to this day.
Newspapers are only offered for sale; the purchase of them is not (as
yet) compulsorily enforced. A newspaper can, therefore, never succeed
unless it prints news in which people are interested and on the nature
of which they can be taken in. A newspaper can manufacture interest,
but there are certain broad currents in human affairs which neither a
newspaper proprietor nor any other human being can control. If England
is at war no newspaper can boycott war news and live. If London were
devastated by an earthquake no advertising power in the Insurance
Companies nor any private interest of newspaper owners in real estate
could prevent the thing "getting into the newspapers."
Indeed, until quite lately--say, until about the '80's or so--most
news printed was really news about things which people wanted to
understand. However garbled or truncated or falsified, it at least
dealt with interesting matters which the newspaper proprietors had not
started as a hare of their own, and which the public, as a whole, was
determined to hear something about. Even to-day, apart from the war,
there is a large element of this.
There was (and is) a further check upon the artificiality of the news
side of the Press; which is that Reality always comes into its own at
last.
You cannot, beyond a certain limit of time, burke reality.
In a word, the Press must always largely deal with what are called
"living issues." It can _boycott_ very successfully, and does so, with
complete power. But it cannot artificially create unlimitedly the
objects of "news."
There is, then, this much truth in the old figment of the Press being
"an organ of opinion," that it must in some degree (and that a large
degree) present real matter for observation and debate. It can and
does select. It can and does garble. But it has to do this always
within certain limitations.
These limitations have, I think, already been reached; but that is a
matter which I argue more fully later on.
VII
As to opinion, you have the same limitations.
If opinion can be once launched in spite of, or during the
indifference of, the Press (and it is a big "if"); if there is no
machinery for actually suppressing the mere statement of a doctrine
clearly important to its readers--then the Press is bound sooner or
later to deal with such doctrine: just as it is bound to deal with
really vital news.
Here, again, we are dealing with something very different indeed from
that title "An organ of opinion" to which the large newspaper has in
the past pretended. But I am arguing for the truth that the Press--in
the sense of the great Capitalist newspapers--cannot be wholly
divorced from opinion.
We have had three great examples of this in our own time in England.
Two proceeded from the small wealthy class, and one from the mass of
the people.
The two proceeding from the small wealthy classes were the Fabian
movement and the movement for Women's Suffrage. The one proceeding
from the populace was the sudden, brief (and rapidly suppressed)
insurrection of the working classes against their masters in the
matter of Chinese Labour in South Africa.
The Fabian movement, which was a drawing-room movement, compelled the
discussion in the Press of Socialism, for and against. Although every
effort was made to boycott the Socialist contention in the Press, the
Fabians were at last strong enough to compel its discussion, and they
have by now canalized the whole thing into the direction of their
"Servile State." I myself am no more than middle-aged, but I can
remember the time when popular newspapers such as "The Star" openly
printed arguments in favour of Collectivism, and though to-day those
arguments are never heard in the Press--largely because the Fabian
Society has itself abandoned Collectivism in favour of forced
labour--yet we may be certain that a Capitalist paper would not have
discussed them at all, still less have supported them, unless it had
been compelled. The newspapers simply _could_ not ignore Socialism at
a time when Socialism still commanded a really strong body of opinion
among the wealthy.
It was the same with the Suffrage for Women, which cry a clique of
wealthy ladies got up in London. I have never myself quite understood
why these wealthy ladies wanted such an absurdity as the modern
franchise, or why they so blindly hated the Christian institution of
the Family. I suppose it was some perversion. But, anyhow, they
displayed great sincerity, enthusiasm, and devotion, suffering many
things for their cause, and acting in the only way which is at all
practical in our plutocracy--to wit, by making their fellow-rich
exceedingly uncomfortable. You may say that no one newspaper took up
the cause, but, at least, it was not boycotted. It was actively
discussed.
The little flash in the pan of Chinese Labour was, I think, even more
remarkable. The Press not only had word from the twin Party Machines
(with which it was then allied for the purposes of power) to boycott
the Chinese Labour agitation rigidly, but it was manifestly to the
interest of all the Capitalist Newspaper Proprietors to boycott it,
and boycott it they did--as long as they could. But it was too much
for them. They were swept off their feet. There were great meetings in
the North-country which almost approached the dignity of popular
action, and the Press at last not only took up the question for
discussion, but apparently permitted itself a certain timid support.
My point is, then, that the idea of the Press as "an organ of public
opinion," that is, "an expression of the general thought and will," is
not _only_ hypocritical, though it is _mainly_ so. There is still
something in the claim. A generation ago there was more, and a couple
of generations ago there was more still.
Even to-day, if a large paper went right against the national will in
the matter of the present war it would be ruined, and papers which
supported in 1914 the Cabinet intrigue to abandon our Allies at the
beginning of the war have long since been compelled to eat their
words.
For the strength of a newspaper owner lies in his power to deceive the
public and to withhold or to publish at will hidden things: his power
in this terrifies the professional politicians who hold nominal
authority: in a word, the newspaper owner controls the professional
politician because he can and does blackmail the professional
politician, especially upon his private life. But if he does not
command a large public this power to blackmail does not exist; and he
can only command a large public--that is, a large circulation--by
interesting that public and even by flattering it that it has its
opinions reflected--not created--for it.
The power of the Press is not a direct and open power. It depends upon
a trick of deception; and no trick of deception works if the trickster
passes a certain degree of cynicism.
We must, therefore, guard ourselves against the conception that the
great modern Capitalist Press is _merely_ a channel for the
propagation of such news as may suit its proprietors, or of such
opinions as they hold or desire to see held. Such a judgment would be
fanatical, and therefore worthless.
Our interest is in the _degree_ to which news can be suppressed or
garbled, particular discussion of interest to the common-weal
suppressed, spontaneous opinion boycotted, and artificial opinion
produced.
VIII
I say that our interest lies in the question of degree. It always
does. The philosopher said: "All things are a matter of degree; and
who shall establish degree?" But I think we are agreed--and by "we" I
mean all educated men with some knowledge of the world around us--that
the degree to which the suppression of truth, the propagation of
falsehood, the artificial creation of opinion, and the boycott of
inconvenient doctrine have reached in the great Capitalist Press for
some time past in England, is at least dangerously high.
There is no one in public life but could give dozens of examples from
his own experience of perfectly sensible letters to the Press, citing
irrefutable testimony upon matters of the first importance, being
refused publicity. Within the guild of the journalists, there is not a
man who could not give you a hundred examples of deliberate
suppression and deliberate falsehood by his employers both as regards
news important to the nation and as regards great bodies of opinion.
Equally significant with the mere vast numerical accumulation of such
instances is their quality.
Let me give a few examples. No straightforward, common-sense, _real_
description of any professional politician--his manners, capacities,
way of speaking, intelligence--ever appears to-day in any of the great
papers. We never have anything within a thousand miles of what men who
meet them _say_.
We are, indeed, long past the time when the professional politicians
were treated as revered beings of whom an inept ritual description had
to be given. But the substitute has only been a putting of them into
the limelight in another and more grotesque fashion, far less
dignified, and quite equally false.
We cannot even say that the professional politicians are still made to
"fill the stage." That metaphor is false, because upon a stage the
audience knows that it is all play-acting, and actually _sees_ the
figures.
Let any man of reasonable competence soberly and simply describe the
scene in the House of Commons when some one of the ordinary
professional politicians is speaking.
It would not be an exciting description. The truth here would not be a
violent or dangerous truth. Let him but write soberly and with truth.
Let him write it as private letters are daily written in dozens about
such folk, or as private conversation runs among those who know them,
and who have no reason to exaggerate their importance, but see them as
they are. Such a description would never be printed! The few owners of
the Press will not turn off the limelight and make a brief, accurate
statement about these mediocrities, because their power to govern
depends upon keeping in the limelight the men whom they control.
Once let the public know what sort of mediocrities the politicians are
and they lose power. Once let them lose power and their hidden masters
lose power.
Take a larger instance: the middle and upper classes are never allowed
by any chance to hear in time the dispute which leads to a strike or a
lock-out.
Here is an example of news which is of the utmost possible importance
to the commonwealth, and to each of us individually. To understand
_why_ a vast domestic dispute has arisen is the very first necessity
for a sound civic judgment. But we never get it. The event
always comes upon us with violence and is always completely
misunderstood--because the Press has boycotted the men's claims.
I talked to dozens of people in my own station of life--that is, of
the professional middle classes--about the great building lock-out
which coincided with the outbreak of the War. _I did not find a single
one who knew that it was a lock-out at all!_ The few who did at least
know the difference between a strike and a lock-out, _all_ thought it
was a strike!
Let no one say that the disgusting falsehoods spread by the Press in
this respect were of no effect The men themselves gave in, and their
perfectly just demands were defeated, mainly because middle-class
opinion _and a great deal of proletarian opinion as well_ had been led
to believe that the builders' cessation of labour was a _strike_ due
to their own initiative against existing conditions, and thought the
operation of such an initiative immoral in time of war. They did not
know the plain truth that the provocation was the masters', and that
the men were turned out of employment, that is deprived of access to
the Capitalist stores of food and all other necessaries, wantonly and
avariciously by the masters. The Press would not print that enormous
truth.
I will give another general example.
The whole of England was concerned during the second year of the War
with the first rise in the price of food. There was no man so rich but
he had noticed it in his household books, and for nine families out of
ten it was the one pre-occupation of the moment. I do not say the
great newspapers did not deal with it, but _how_ did they deal with
it? With a mass advocacy in favour of this professional politician or
that; with a mass of unco-ordinated advices; and, above all, with a
mass of nonsense about the immense earnings of the proletariat. The
whole thing was really and deliberately side-tracked for months until,
by the mere force of things, it compelled attention. Each of us is a
witness to this. We have all seen it. Every single reader of these
lines knows that my indictment is true. Not a journalist of the
hundreds who were writing the falsehood or the rubbish at the
dictation of his employer but had felt the strain upon the little
weekly cheque which was his _own_ wage. Yet this enormous national
thing was at first not dealt with at all in the Press, and, when dealt
with, was falsified out of recognition.
I could give any number of other, and, perhaps, minor instances as the
times go (but still enormous instances as older morals went) of the
same thing. They have shown the incapacity and falsehood of the great
capitalist newspapers during these few months of white-hot crisis in
the fate of England.
This is not a querulous complaint against evils that are human and
necessary, and therefore always present. I detest such waste of
energy, and I agree with all my heart in the statement recently made
by the Editor of "The New Age" that in moments such as these, when any
waste is inexcusable, sterile complaint is the _worst_ of waste. But
my complaint here is not sterile. It is fruitful. This Capitalist
Press has come at last to warp all judgment. The tiny oligarchy which
controls it is irresponsible and feels itself immune. It has come to
believe that it can suppress any truth and suggest any falsehood. It
governs, and governs abominably: and it is governing thus in the midst
of a war for life.
IX
I say that the few newspaper controllers govern; and govern
abominably. I am right. But they only do so, as do all new powers, by
at once alliance with, and treason against, the old: witness
Harmsworth and the politicians. The new governing Press is an
oligarchy which still works "in with" the just-less-new parliamentary
oligarchy.
This connection has developed in the great Capitalist papers a certain
character which can be best described by the term "Official."
Under certain forms of arbitrary government in Continental Europe
ministers once made use of picked and rare newspapers to express their
views, and these newspapers came to be called "The Official Press." It
was a crude method, and has been long abandoned even by the simpler
despotic forms of government. Nothing of that kind exists now, of
course, in the deeper corruption of modern Europe--least of all in
England.
What has grown up here is a Press organization of support and favour
to the system of professional politics which colours the whole of our
great Capitalist papers to-day in England. This gives them so distinct
a character, of parliamentary falsehood, and that falsehood is so
clearly dictated by their connection with executive power that they
merit the title "Official."
The regime under which we are now living is that of a Plutocracy which
has gradually replaced the old Aristocratic tradition of England.
This Plutocracy--a few wealthy interests--in part controls, in part is
expressed by, is in part identical with the professional politicians,
and it has in the existing Capitalist Press an ally similar to that
"Official Press" which continental nations knew in the past. But there
is this great difference, that the "Official Press" of Continental
experiments never consisted in more than a few chosen organs the
character of which was well known, and the attitude of which
contrasted sharply with the rest. But _our_ "official Press" (for it
is no less) covers the whole field. It has in the region of the great
newspapers no competitor; indeed, it has no competitors at all, save
that small Free Press, of which I shall speak in a moment, and which
is its sole antagonist.
If any one doubts that this adjective "official" can properly be
applied to our Capitalist Press to-day, let him ask himself first what
the forces are which govern the nation, and next, whether those
forces--that Government or regime--could be better served even under a
system of permanent censorship than it is in the great dailies of
London and the principal provincial capitals.
Is not everything which the regime desires to be suppressed,
suppressed? Is not everything which it desires suggested, suggested?
And is there any public question which would weaken the regime, and
the discussion of which is ever allowed to appear in the great
Capitalist journals?
There has not been such a case for at least twenty years. The current
simulacrum of criticism apparently attacking some portion of the
regime, never deals with matters vital to its prestige. On the
contrary, it deliberately side-tracks any vital discussion that
sincere conviction may have forced upon the public, and spoils the
scent with false issues.
One paper, not a little while ago, was clamouring against the excess
of lawyers in Government. Its remedy was an opposition to be headed by
a lawyer.
Another was very serious upon secret trading with the enemy. It
suppressed for months all reference to the astounding instance of that
misdemeanour by the connections of a very prominent professional
politician early in the war, and refused to comment on the single
reference made to this crime in the House of Commons!
Another clamours for the elimination of enemy financial power in the
affairs of this country, and yet says not a word upon the auditing of
the secret Party Funds!
I say that the big daily papers have now not only those other
qualities dangerous to the State which I have described, but that they
have become essentially "official," that is, insincere and corrupt in
their interested support of that plutocratic complex which, in the
decay of aristocracy, governs England. They are as official in this
sense as were ever the Court organs of ephemeral Continental
experiments. All the vices, all the unreality, and all the peril that
goes with the existence of an official Press is stamped upon the great
dailies of our time. They are not independent where Power is
concerned. They do not really criticize. They serve a clique whom they
should expose, and denounce and betray the generality--that is the
State--for whose sake the salaried public servants should be
perpetually watched with suspicion and sharply kept in control.
The result is that the mass of Englishmen have ceased to obtain, or
even to expect, information upon the way they are governed.
They are beginning to feel a certain uneasiness. They know that their
old power of observation over public servants has slipped from them.
They suspect that the known gross corruption of Public life, and
particularly of the House of Commons, is entrenched behind a
conspiracy of silence on the part of those very few who have the power
to inform them. But, as yet, they have not passed the stage of such
suspicion. They have not advanced nearly as far as the discovery of
the great newspaper owners and their system. They are still, for the
most part, duped.
This transitional state of affairs (for I hope to show that it is only
transitional) is a very great evil. It warps and depletes public
information. It prevents the just criticism of public servants. Above
all, it gives immense and _irresponsible_ power to a handful of
wealthy men--and especially to the one most wealthy and unscrupulous
among them--whose wealth is an accident of speculation, whose origins
are repulsive, and whose characters have, as a rule, the weakness and
baseness developed by this sort of adventures. There are, among such
gutter-snipes, thousands whose luck ends in the native gutter, half a
dozen whose luck lands them into millions, one or two at most who, on
the top of such a career go crazy with the ambition of the parvenu and
propose to direct the State. Even when gambling adventurers of this
sort are known and responsible (as they are in professional politics)
their power is a grave danger. Possessing as the newspaper owners do
every power of concealment and, at the same time, no shred of
responsibility to any organ of the State, they are a deadly peril. The
chief of these men are more powerful to-day than any Minister. Nay,
they do, as I have said (and it is now notorious), make and unmake
Ministers, and they may yet in our worst hour decide the national
fate.
* * * * *
Now to every human evil of a political sort that has appeared in
history (to every evil, that is, affecting the State, and proceeding
from the will of man--not from ungovernable natural forces outside
man) there comes a term and a reaction.
Here I touch the core of my matter. Side by side with what I have
called "the Official Press" in our top-heavy plutocracy there has
arisen a certain force for which I have a difficulty in finding a
name, but which I will call for lack of a better name "the Free
Press."
I might call it the "independent" Press were it not that such a word
would connote as yet a little too much power, though I do believe its
power to be rising, and though I am confident that it will in the near
future change our affairs.
I am not acquainted with any other modern language than French and
English, but I read this Free Press French and English, Colonial and
American regularly and it seems to me the chief intellectual
phenomenon of our time.
In France and in England, and for all I know elsewhere, there has
arisen in protest against the complete corruption and falsehood of
the great Capitalist papers a crop of new organs which _are_ in the
strictest sense of the word "organs of Opinion." I need not detain
English readers with the effect of this upon the Continent. It is
already sufficiently noteworthy in England alone, and we shall do well
to note it carefully.
"The New Age" was, I think, the pioneer in the matter. It still
maintains a pre-eminent position. I myself founded the "Eye-Witness"
in the same chapter of ideas (by which I do not mean at all with
similar objects of propaganda). Ireland has produced more than one
organ of the sort, Scotland one or two. Their number will increase.
With this I pass from the just denunciation of evil to the exposition
of what is good.
I propose to examine the nature of that movement which I call "The
Free Press," to analyse the disabilities under which it suffers, and
to conclude with my conviction that it is, in spite of its
disabilities, not only a growing force, but a salutary one, and, in a
certain measure, a conquering one. It is to this argument that I
shall now ask my readers to direct themselves.
X
The rise of what I have called "The Free Press" was due to a reaction
against what I have called "The Official Press." But this reaction was
not single in motive.
Three distinct moral motives lay behind it and converged upon it. We
shall do well to separate and recognize each, because each has had
it's effect upon the Free Press as a whole, and that Free Press bears
the marks of all three most strongly to-day.
The first motive apparent, coming much earlier than either of the
other two, was the motive of (A) _Propaganda_. The second motive was
(B) _Indignation against the concealment of Truth_, and the third
motive was (C) _Indignation against irresponsible power_: the sense of
oppression which an immoral irresponsibility in power breeds among
those who are unhappily subject to it.
Let us take each of these in their order.
XI
A
The motive of Propaganda (which began to work much the earliest of the
three) concerned Religions, and also certain racial enthusiasms or
political doctrines which, by their sincerity and readiness for
sacrifice, had half the force of Religions.
Men found that the great papers (in their final phase) refused to talk
about anything really important in Religion. They dared do nothing but
repeat very discreetly the vaguest ethical platitudes. They hardly
dared do even that. They took for granted a sort of invertebrate
common opinion. They consented to be slightly coloured by the
dominating religion of the country in which each paper happened to be
printed--and there was an end of it.
Great bodies of men who cared intensely for a definite creed found
that expression for it was lacking, even if this creed (as in France)
were that of a very large majority in the State. The "organs of
opinion" professed a genteel ignorance of that idea which was most
widespread, most intense, and most formative. Nor could it be
otherwise with a Capitalist enterprise whose directing motive was not
conversion or even expression, but mere gain. There was nothing to
distinguish a large daily paper owned by a Jew from one owned by an
Agnostic or a Catholic. Necessity of expression compelled the creation
of a Free Press in connection with this one motive of religion.
Men came across very little of this in England, because England was
for long virtually homogeneous in religion, and that religion was not
enthusiastic during the years in which the Free Press arose. But such
a Free Press in defence of religion (the pioneer of all the Free
Press) arose in Ireland and in France and elsewhere. It had at first
no quarrel with the big official Capitalist Press. It took for granted
the anodyne and meaningless remarks on Religion which appeared in the
sawdust in the Official Press, but it asserted the necessity of
specially emphasizing its particular point of view in its own columns:
for religion affects all life.
This same motive of Propaganda later launched other papers in defence
of enthusiasms other than strictly religious enthusiasms, and the most
important of these was the enthusiasm for Collectivism--Socialism.
A generation ago and more, great numbers of men were persuaded that a
solution for the whole complex of social injustice was to be found in
what they called "nationalizing the means of production, distribution,
and exchange." That is, of course, in plain English, putting land,
houses, and machinery, and stores of food and clothing into the hands
of the politicians for control in use and for distribution in
consumption.
This creed was held with passionate conviction by men of the highest
ability in every country of Europe; and a Socialist Press began to
arise, which was everywhere free, and soon in active opposition to the
Official Press. Again (of a religious temper in their segregation,
conviction and enthusiasm) there began to appear (when the oppressor
was mild), the small papers defending the rights of oppressed
nationalities.
Religion, then, and cognate enthusiasms were the first breeders of the
Free Press.
It is exceedingly important to recognize this, because it has stamped
the whole movement with a particular character to which I shall later
refer when I come to its disabilities.
The motive of Propaganda, I repeat, was not at first conscious of
anything iniquitous in the great Press or Official Press side by side
with which it existed. Veuillot, in founding his splendidly fighting
newspaper, which had so prodigious an effect in France, felt no
particular animosity against the "Debats," for instance; his
particular Catholic enthusiasm recognized itself as exceptional, and
was content to accept the humble or, at any rate, inferior position,
which admitted eccentricity connotes. "Later," these founders of the
Free Press seemed to say, "we may convert the mass to our views, but,
for the moment, we are admittedly a clique: an exceptional body with
the penalties attaching to such." They said this although the whole
life of France is at least as Catholic as the life of Great Britain is
Plutocratic, or the life of Switzerland Democratic. And they said it
because they arose _after_ the Capitalist press (neutral in religion
as in every vital thing) had captured the whole field.
The first Propagandists, then, did not stand up to the Official Press
as equals. They crept in as inferiors, or rather as open ex-centrics.
For Victorian England and Third Empire France falsely proclaimed the
"representative" quality of the Official Press.
To the honour of the Socialist movement the Socialist Free Press was
the first to stand up as an equal against the giants.
I remember how in my boyhood I was shocked and a little dazed to see
references in Socialist sheets such as "Justice" to papers like the
"Daily Telegraph," or the "Times," with the epithet "Capitalist" put
after them in brackets. I thought, then, it was the giving of an
abnormal epithet to a normal thing; but I now know that these small
Socialist free papers were talking the plainest common sense when they
specifically emphasized as _Capitalist_ the falsehoods and
suppressions of their great contemporaries. From the Socialist point
of view the leading fact about the insincerity of the great official
papers is that this insincerity is Capitalist; just as from a Catholic
point of view the leading fact about it was, and is, that it is
anti-Catholic.
Though, however, certain of the Socialist Free Papers thus boldly took
up a standpoint of moral equality with the others, their attitude was
exceptional. Most editors or owners of, most writers upon, the Free
Press, in its first beginnings, took the then almost universal point
of view that the great papers were innocuous enough and fairly
represented general opinion, and were, therefore, not things to be
specifically combated.
The great Dailies were thought grey; not wicked--only general and
vague. The Free Press in its beginnings did not attack as an enemy. It
only timidly claimed to be heard. It _regarded itself_ as a
"speciality." It was humble. And there went with it a mass of
ex-centric stuff.
If one passes in review all the Free Press journals which owed their
existence in England and France alone to this motive of Propaganda,
one finds many "side shows," as it were, beside the main motives of
local or race patriotism, Religion, or Socialist conviction. You
have, for instance, up and down Europe, the very powerful and
exceedingly well-written anti-Semitic papers, of which Drumont's
"Libre Parole" was long the chief. You have the Single-tax papers. You
have the Teetotal papers--and, really, it is a wonder that you have
not yet also had the Iconoclasts and the Diabolists producing papers.
The Rationalist and the Atheist propaganda I reckon among the
religious.
We may take it, then, that Propaganda was, in order of time, the first
motive of the Free Press and the first cause of its production.
Now from this fact arises a consideration of great importance to our
subject. This Propagandist origin of the Free Press stamped it from
its outset with a character it still bears, and will continue to bear,
until it has had that effect in correcting, and, perhaps, destroying,
the Official Press, to which I shall later turn.
I mean that the Free Press has had stamped upon it the character of
_disparate particularism_.
Wherever I go, my first object, if I wish to find out the truth, is to
get hold of the Free Press in France as in England, and even in
America. But I know that wherever I get hold of such an organ it will
be very strongly coloured with the opinion, or even fanaticism, of
some minority. The Free Press, as a whole, if you add it all up and
cancel out one exaggerated statement against another, does give you a
true view of the state of society in which you live. The Official
Press to-day gives you an absurdly false one everywhere. What a
caricature--and what a base, empty caricature--of England or France or
Italy you get in the "Times," or the "Manchester Guardian," the
"Matin," or the "Tribune"! No one of them is in any sense general--or
really national.
The Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections,
for it is _disparate_ and it is _particularist_: it is marked with
isolation--and it is so marked because its origin lay in various and
most diverse _propaganda_: because it came later than the official
Press of Capitalism, and was, in its origins, but a reaction against
it.
B
The second motive, that of indignation against _falsehood_, came to
work much later than the motive of propaganda.
Men gradually came to notice that one thing after another of great
public interest, sometimes of vital public interest, was deliberately
suppressed in the principal great official papers, and that positive
falsehoods were increasingly suggested, or stated.
There was more than this. For long the _owner_ of a newspaper had for
the most part been content to regard it as a revenue-producing thing.
The _editor_ was supreme in matters of culture and opinion. True, the
editor, being revocable and poor, could not pretend to full political
power. But it was a sort of dual arrangement which yet modified the
power of the vulgar owner.
I myself remember that state of affairs: the editor who was a
gentleman and dined out, the proprietor who was a lord and nervous
when he met a gentleman. It changed in the nineties of the last
century or the late eighties. It had disappeared by the 1900's.
The editor became (and now is) a mere mouthpiece of the proprietor.
Editors succeed each other rapidly. Of great papers to-day the
editor's name of the moment is hardly known--but not a Cabinet
Minister that could not pass an examination in the life, vices,
vulnerability, fortune, investments and favours of the owner. The
change was rapidly admitted. It came quickly but thoroughly. At
last--like most rapid developments--it exceeded itself.
Men owning the chief newspapers could be heard boasting of their power
in public, as an admitted thing; and as this power was recognized, and
as it grew with time and experiment, it bred a reaction.
Why should this or that vulgarian (men began to say) exercise (and
boast of!) the power to keep the people ignorant upon matters vital to
us all? To distort, to lie? The sheer necessity of getting certain
truths told, which these powerful but hidden fellows refused to tell,
was a force working at high potential and almost compelling the
production of Free Papers side by side with the big Official ones.
That is why you nearly always find the Free Press directed by men of
intelligence and cultivation--of exceptional intelligence and
cultivation. And that is where it contrasts most with its opponents.
C
But only a little later than this second motive of indignation against
falsehood and acting with equal force (though upon fewer men) was the
third motive of _freedom_: of indignation against _arbitrary Power_.
For men who knew the way in which we are governed, and who recognized,
especially during the last twenty years, that the great newspaper was
coming to be more powerful than the open and responsible (though
corrupt) Executive of the country, the position was intolerable.
It is bad enough to be governed by an aristocracy or a monarch whose
executive power is dependent upon legend in the mass of the people; it
is humiliating enough to be thus governed through a sort of
play-acting instead of enjoying the self-government of free men.
It is worse far to be governed by a clique of Professional Politicians
bamboozling the multitude with a pretence of "Democracy."
But it is intolerable that similar power should reside in the hands of
obscure nobodies about whom no illusion could possibly exist, whose
tyranny is not admitted or public at all, who do not even take the
risk of exposing their features, and to whom no responsibility
whatever attaches.
The knowledge that this was so provided the third, and, perhaps, the
most powerful motive for the creation of a Free Press.
Unfortunately, it could affect only very few men. With the mass even
of well-educated and observant men the feeling created by the novel
power of the great papers was little more than a vague ill ease. They
had a general conception that the owner of a widely circulated popular
newspaper could, and did, blackmail the professional politician: make
or unmake the professional politician by granting or refusing him the
limelight; dispose of Cabinets; nominate absurd Ministers.
But the particular, vivid, concrete instances that specially move men
to action were hidden from them. Only a small number of people were
acquainted with such particular truths. But that small number knew
very well that we were thus in reality governed by men responsible to
no one, and hidden from public blame. The determination to be rid of
such a secret monopoly of power compelled a reaction: and that
reaction was the Free Press.
XII
Such being the motive powers of the Free Press in all countries, but
particularly in France and England, where the evils of the Capitalist
(or Official) Press were at their worst, let us next consider the
disabilities under which this reaction--the Free Press--suffered.
I think these disabilities lie under four groups.
(1) In the first place, the free journals suffered from the difficulty
which all true reformers have, that they have to begin by going
against the stream.
(2) In the second place they suffered from that character of
particularism or "crankiness," which was a necessary result of their
Propagandist character.
(3) In the third place--and this is most important--they suffered
economically. They were unable to present to their readers all that
their readers expected at the price. This was because they were
refused advertisement subsidy and were boycotted.
(4) In the fourth place, for reasons that will be apparent in a
moment, they suffered from lack of information.
To these four main disabilities the Free Papers in _this_ country
added a fifth peculiarly our own; they stood in peril from the
arbitrary power of the Political Lawyers.
Let us consider first the main four points. When we have examined them
all we shall see against what forces, and in spite of what negative
factors, the Free Press has established itself to-day.
1
I say that in the first place the Free Press, being a reformer,
suffered from what all reformers suffer from, to wit, that in their
origins they must, by definition, go against the stream.
The official Capitalist Press round about them had already become a
habit when the Free Papers appeared. Men had for some time made it a
normal thing to read their daily paper; to believe what it told them
to be facts, and even in a great measure to accept its opinion. A new
voice criticizing by implication, or directly blaming or ridiculing a
habit so formed, was necessarily an unpopular voice with the mass of
readers, or, if it was not unpopular, that was only because it was
negligible.
This first disability, however, under which the Free Press suffered,
and still suffers, would not naturally have been of long duration. The
remaining three were far graver. For the mere inertia or counter
current against which any reformer struggles is soon turned if the
reformer (as was the case here) represented a real reaction, and was
doing or saying things which the people, had they been as well
informed as himself, would have agreed with. With the further
disabilities of (2) particularism, (3) poverty, (4) insufficiency (to
which I add, in this country, restraint by the political lawyers), it
was otherwise.
2
The Particularism of the Free Papers was a grave and permanent
weakness which still endures. Any instructed man to-day who really
wants to find out what is going on reads the Free Press; but he is
compelled, as I have said, to read the whole of it and piece together
the sections if he wishes to discover his true whereabouts. Each
particular organ gives him an individual impression, which is
ex-centric, often highly ex-centric, to the general impression.
When I want to know, for instance, what is happening in France, I read
the Jewish Socialist paper, the "Humanité"; the most violent French
Revolutionary papers I can get, such as "La Guerre Sociale"; the
Royalist "Action Française"; the anti-Semitic "Libre Parole," and so
forth.
If I want to find out what is really happening with regard to
Ireland, I not only buy the various small Irish free papers (and they
are numerous), but also "The New Age" and the "New Witness": and so
on, all through the questions that are of real and vital interest. But
I only get my picture as a composite. The very same truth will be
emphasized by different Free Papers for totally different motives.
Take the Marconi case. The big official papers first boycotted it for
months, and then told a pack of silly lies in support of the
politicians. The Free Press gave one the truth but its various organs
gave the truth for very different reasons and with very different
impressions. To some of the Irish papers Marconi was a comic episode,
"just what one expects of Westminster"; others dreaded it for fear it
should lower the value of the Irish-owned Marconi shares. "The New
Age" looked at it from quite another point of view than that of the
"New Witness," and the specifically Socialist Free Press pointed it
out as no more than an example of what happens under Capitalist
Government.
A Mahommedan paper would no doubt have called it a result of the
Nazarene religion, and a Thug paper an awful example of what happens
when your politicians are not Thugs.
My point is, then, that the Free Press thus starting from so many
different particular standpoints has not yet produced a general organ;
by which I mean that it has not produced an organ such as would
command the agreement of a very great body of men, should that very
great body of men be instructed on the real way in which we are
governed.
Drumont was very useful for telling one innumerable particular
fragments of truth, which the Official Press refuse to mention--such
as the way in which the Rothschilds cheated the French Government over
the death duties in Paris some years ago. Indeed, he alone ultimately
compelled those wealthy men to disgorge, and it was a fine piece of
work. But when he went on to argue that cheating the revenue was a
purely Jewish vice he could never get the mass of people to agree with
him, for it was nonsense.
Charles Maurras is one of the most powerful writers living, and when
he points out in the "Action Française" that the French Supreme Court
committed an illegal action at the close of the Dreyfus case, he is
doing useful work, for he is telling the truth on a matter of vital
public importance. But when he goes on to say that such a thing would
not have occurred under a nominal Monarchy, he is talking nonsense.
Any one with the slightest experience of what the Courts of Law can be
under a nominal Monarchy shrugs his shoulders and says that Maurras's
action may have excellent results, but that his proposed remedy of
setting up one of these modern Kingships in. France in the place of
the very corrupt Parliament is not convincing.
The "New Republic" in New York vigorously defends Brandeis because
Brandeis is a Jew, and the "New Republic" (which I read regularly, and
which is invaluable to-day as an independent instructor on a small
rich minority of American opinion) is Jewish in tone. The defence of
Brandeis interests me and instructs me. But when the "New Republic"
prints pacifist propaganda by Brailsford, or applauds Lane under the
alias of "Norman Angell," it is--in my view--eccentric and even
contemptible. "New Ireland" helps me to understand the quarrel of the
younger men in Ireland with the Irish Parliamentary party--but I must,
and do, read the "Freeman" as well.
In a word, the Free Press all over the world, as far as I can read it,
suffers from this note of particularity, and, therefore, of isolation
and strain. It is not of general appeal.
In connection with this disability you get the fact that the Free
Press has come to depend upon individuals, and thus fails to be as yet
an institution. It is difficult, to see how any of the papers I have
named would long survive a loss of their present editorship. There
might possibly be one successor; there certainly would not be two; and
the result is that the effect of these organs is sporadic and
irregular.
In the same connection you have the disability of a restricted
audience.
There are some men (and I count myself one) who will read anything,
however much they differ from its tone and standpoint, in order to
obtain more knowledge. I am not sure that it is a healthy habit. At
any rate it is an unusual one. Most men will only read that which,
while informing them, takes for granted a philosophy more or less
sympathetic with their own. The Free Press, therefore, so long as it
springs from many and varied minorities, not only suffers everywhere
from an audience restricted in the case of each organ, but from
preaching to the converted. It does get hold of a certain outside
public which increases slowly, but it captures no great area of public
attention at any one time.
3
The third group of disabilities, as I have said, attaches to the
economic weakness of the Free Press.
The Free Press is rigorously boycotted by the great advertisers,
partly, perhaps, because its small circulation renders them
contemptuous (because nearly all of them are of the true wooden-headed
"business" type that go in herds and never see for themselves where
their goods will find the best market); but much more from frank
enmity against the existence of any Free Press at all.
Stupidity, for instance, would account for the great advertisers not
advertising articles of luxury in a paper with only a three thousand a
week circulation, even if that paper were read from cover to cover by
all the rich people in England; but it would not account for absence
_in the Free Press alone_ of advertisements appearing in every other
kind of paper, and in many organs of far smaller circulation than the
Free Press papers have.
The boycott is deliberate, and is persistently maintained. The effect
is that the Free Press cannot give in space and quality of paper,
excellence of distribution, and the rest, what the Official Press can
give; for it lacks advertisement subsidy. This is a very grave
economic handicap indeed.
In part the Free Press is indirectly supported by a subsidy from its
own writers. Men whose writing commands high payment will contribute
to the Free Press sometimes for small fees, usually for nothing; but,
at any rate, always well below their market prices. But contribution
of that kind is always precarious, and, if I may use the word, jerky.
Meanwhile, it does not fill a paper. It is true that the level of
writing in the Free Press is very much higher than in the Official
Press. To compare the Notes in "The New Age," for instance, with the
Notes in the "Spectator" is to discern a contrast like that between
one's chosen conversation with equals, and one's forced conversation
with commercial travellers in a rail-way carriage. To read Shaw or
Wells or Gilbert or Cecil Chesterton or Quiller Couch or any one of
twenty others in the "New Witness" is to be in another world from the
sludge and grind of the official weekly. But the boycott is rigid and
therefore the supply is intermittent. It is not only a boycott of
advertisement: it is a boycott of quotation. Most of the governing
class know the Free Press. The vast lower middle class does not yet
know that it exists.
The occasional articles in the Free Press have the same mark of high
value, but it is not regular: and, meanwhile, hardly one of the Free
Papers pays its way.
The difficulty of distribution, which I have mentioned, comes under
the same heading, and is another grave handicap.
If a man finds a difficulty in getting some paper to which he is not a
regular subscriber, but which he desires to purchase more or less
regularly, it drops out of his habits. I myself, who am an assiduous
reader of all such matter, have sometimes lost touch with one Free
Paper or another for months, on account of a couple of weeks'
difficulty in getting my copy, I believe this impediment of habit to
apply to most of the Free Papers.
4
Fourthly, but also partly economic, there is the impediment the Free
Press suffers of imperfect information. It will print truths which the
Great Papers studiously conceal, but daily and widespread information
on general matters it has great difficulty in obtaining.
Information is obtained either at great expense through private
agents, or else by favour through official channels, that is, from
the professional politicians. The Official Press makes and unmakes the
politicians. Therefore, the politician is careful to keep it informed
of truths that are valuable to him, as well as to make it the organ of
falsehoods equally valuable.
Most of the official papers, for instance, were informed of the Indian
Silver scandal by the culprits themselves in a fashion which
forestalled attack. Those who led the attack groped in the dark.
For we must remember that the professional politicians all stand in
together when a financial swindle is being carried out. There is no
"opposition" in these things. Since it is the very business of the
Free Press to expose the falsehood or inanity of the Official
Capitalist Press, one may truly say that a great part of the energies
of the Free Press is wasted in this "groping in the dark" to which it
is condemned. At the same time, the Economic difficulty prevents the
Free Press from paying for information difficult to be obtained, and
under these twin disabilities it remains heavily handicapped.
THE POLITICAL LAWYERS
We must consider separately, for it is not universal but peculiar to
our own society, the heavy disability under which the Free Press
suffers in this country from the now unchecked power of the political
lawyers.
I have no need to emphasize the power of a Guild when it is once
formed, and has behind it strong corporate traditions. It is the
principal thesis of "The New Age," in which this essay first appeared,
that national guilds, applied to the whole field of society, would be
the saving of it through their inherent strength and vitality.
Such guilds as we still have among us (possessed of a Charter giving
them a monopoly, and, therefore, making them in "The New Age" phrase
"black-leg proof") are confined, of course, to the privileged
wealthier classes. The two great ones with which we are all familiar
are those of the Doctors and of the Lawyers.
What their power is we saw in the sentencing to one of the most
terrible punishments known to all civilized Europe--twelve months
hard labour--of a man who had exercised his supposed right to give
medical advice to a patient who had freely consulted him. The patient
happened to die, as she might have died in the hands of a regular
Guild doctor. It has been known for patients to die under the hands of
regular Guild doctors. But the mishap taking place in the hands of
some one who was _not_ of the Guild, although the advice had been
freely sought and honestly given, the person who infringed the
monopoly of the Guild suffered this savage piece of revenge.
But even the Guild of the Doctors is not so powerful as that of the
Lawyers, _qua_ guild alone. Its administrative power makes it far more
powerful. The well-to-do are not compelled to employ a doctor, but all
are compelled to employ a lawyer at every turn, and that at a cost
quite unknown anywhere else in Europe. But this power of the legal
guild, _qua_ guild, in modern England is supplemented by further
administrative and arbitrary powers attached to a selected number of
its members.
Now the Lawyers' Guild has latterly become (to its own hurt as it will
find) hardly distinguishable from the complex of professional
politics.
One need not be in Parliament many days to discover that most laws are
made and all revised by members of this Guild. Parliament is, as a
drafting body, virtually a Committee of Lawyers who are indifferent to
the figment of representation which still clings to the House of
Commons.
It should be added that this part of their work is honestly done, that
the greatest labour is devoted to it, and that it is only consciously
tyrannical or fraudulent when the Legal Guild feels _itself_ to be in
danger.
But far more important than the legislative power of the Legal Guild
(which is now the chief framer of statutory law as it has long been
the _salutary_ source of common law) is its executive or governing
power.
Whether after exposing a political scandal you shall or shall not be
subject to the risk of ruin or loss of liberty, and all the
exceptionally cruel scheme of modern imprisonment, depends negatively
upon the Legal Guild. That is, so long as the lawyers support the
politicians you have no redress, and only in case of independent
action by the lawyers against the politicians, with whom they have
come to be so closely identified, have you any opportunity for
discussion and free trial. The old idea of the lawyer on the Bench
protecting the subject against the arbitrary power of the executive,
of the judge independent of the government, has nearly disappeared.
You may, of course, commit any crime with impunity if the professional
politicians among the lawyers refuse to prosecute. But that is only a
negative evil. More serious is the positive side of the affair: that
you may conversely be put at the _risk_ of any penalty if they desire
to put you at that risk; for the modern secret police being ubiquitous
and privileged, their opponent can be decoyed into peril at the will
of those who govern, even where the politicians dare not prosecute him
for exposing corruption.
Once the citizen has been put at this peril--that is, brought into
court before the lawyers--whether it shall lead to his actual ruin or
no is again in the hands of members of the legal guild; the judge
_may_ (it has happened), withstand the politicians (by whom he was
made, to whom he often belongs, and upon whom his general position
to-day depends). He _may_ stand out, or--as nearly always now--he will
identify himself with the political system and act as its mouthpiece.
It is the prevalence of this last attitude which so powerfully affects
the position of the Free Press in this country.
When the judge lends himself to the politicians we all know what
follows.
The instrument used is that of an accusation of libel, and, in cases
where it is desired to establish terror, of criminal libel.
The defence of the man so accused must either be undertaken by a
Member of the Legal Guild--in which case the advocate's own future
depends upon his supporting the interests of the politicians and so
betraying his client--or, if some eccentric undertakes his own
defence, the whole power of the Guild will be turned against him under
forms of liberty which are no longer even hypocritical. A special
juryman, for instance, that should stand out against the political
verdict desired would be a marked man. But the point is not worth
making, for, as a fact, no juryman ever has stood out lately when a
political verdict was ordered.
Even in the case of so glaring an abuse, with which the whole country
is now familiar, we must not exaggerate. It would still be impossible
for the politicians, for instance, to get a verdict during war in
favour of an overt act of treason. But after all, argument of this
sort applies to any tyranny, and the power the politicians have and
exercise of refusing to prosecute, however clear an act of treason or
other grossly unpopular act might be, is equivalent to a power of
acquittal.
The lawyers decide in the last resort on the freedom of speech and
writing among their fellow-citizens, and as their Guild is now
unhappily intertwined with the whole machinery of Executive
Government, we have in modern England an executive controlling the
expression of opinion. It is absolute in a degree unknown, I think, in
past society.
Now, it is evident that, of all forms of civic activity, writing upon
the Free Press most directly challenges this arbitrary power. There is
not an editor responsible for the management of any Free Paper who
will not tell you that a thousand times he has had to consider whether
it were possible to tell a particular truth, however important that
truth might be to the commonwealth. And the fear which restrains him
is the fear of destruction which the combination of the professional
politician, and lawyer holds in its hand. There is not one such editor
who could not bear witness to the numerous occasions on which he had,
however courageous he might be, to forgo the telling of a truth which
was of vital value, because its publication would involve the
destruction of the paper he precariously controlled.
There is no need to labour all this. The loss of freedom we have
gradually suffered is quite familiar to all of us, and it is among the
worst of all the mortal symptoms with which our society is affected.
XIII
Why do I say, then, that in spite of such formidable obstacles, both
in its own character and in the resistance it must overcome, the Free
Press will probably increase in power, and may, in the long run,
transform public opinion?
It is with the argument in favour of this judgment that I will
conclude.
My reasons for forming this judgment are based not only upon the
observation of others but upon my own experience.
I started the "Eye-Witness" (succeeded by the "New Witness" under the
editorship of Mr. Cecil Chesterton, who took it over from me some
years ago, and now under the editorship of his brother, Mr. Gilbert
Chesterton) with the special object of providing a new organ of free
expression.
I knew from intimate personal experience exactly how formidable all
these obstacles were.
I knew how my own paper could not but appear particular and personal,
and could not but suffer from that eccentricity to general opinion of
which I have spoken. I had a half-tragic and half-comic experience of
the economic difficulty; of the difficulty of obtaining information;
of the difficulty in distribution, and all the rest of it. The editor
of "The New Age" could provide an exactly similar record. I had
experience, and after me Mr. Cecil Chesterton had experience, of the
threats levelled by the professional politicians and their modern
lawyers against the free expression of truth, and I have no doubt that
the editor of "The New Age" could provide similar testimony. As for
the Free Press in Ireland, we all know how _that_ is dealt with. It is
simply suppressed at the will of the police.
In the face of such experience, and in spite of it, I am yet of the
deliberate opinion that the Free Press will succeed.
Now let me give my reasons for this audacious conclusion.
XIV
The first thing to note is that the Free Press is not read
perfunctorily, but with close attention. The audience it has, if
small, is an audience which never misses its pronouncements whether it
agrees or disagrees with them, and which is absorbed in its opinions,
its statement of fact and its arguments. Look narrowly at History and
you will find that all great _reforms_ have started thus: not through
a widespread control acting downwards, but through spontaneous energy,
local and intensive, acting upwards.
You cannot say this of the Official Press, for the simple reason that
the Official Press is only of real political interest on rare and
brief occasions. It is read of course, by a thousand times more people
than those who read the Free Press. But its readers are not gripped by
it. They are not, save upon the rare occasions of a particular "scoop"
or "boom," _informed_ by it, in the old sense of that pregnant word,
_informed_:--they are not possessed, filled, changed, moulded to new
action.
One of the proofs of this--a curious, a comic, but a most conclusive
proof--is the dependence of the great daily papers on the headline.
Ninety-nine people out of a hundred retain this and nothing more,
because the matter below is but a flaccid expansion of the headline.
Now the Headline suggests, of course, a fact (or falsehood) with
momentary power. So does the Poster. But the mere fact of dependence
on such methods is a proof of the inherent weakness underlying it.
You have, then, at the outset a difference of _quality_ in the reading
and in the effect of the reading which it is of capital importance to
my argument that the reader should note. The Free Press is really read
and digested. The Official Press is not. Its scream is heard, but it
provides no food for the mind. One does not contrast the exiguity of a
pint of nitric acid in an engraver's studio with the hundreds of
gallons of water in the cisterns of his house. No amount of water
would bite into the copper. Only the acid does that: and a little of
the acid is enough.
XV
Next let it be noted that the Free Press powerfully affects, even when
they disagree with it, and most of all when they hate it, the small
class through whom in the modern world ideas spread.
There never was a time in European history when the mass of people
thought so little for themselves, and depended so much (for the
ultimate form of their society) upon the conclusions and vocabulary of
a restricted leisured body.
That is a diseased state of affairs. It gives all their power to tiny
cliques of well-to-do people. But incidentally it helps the Free
Press.
It is a restricted leisured body to which the Free Press appeals. So
strict has been the boycott--and still is, though a little
weakening--that the editors of, and writers upon, the Free Papers
probably underestimate their own effect even now. They are never
mentioned in the great daily journals. It is a point of honour with
the Official Press to turn a phrase upside down, or, if they must
quote, to quote in the most roundabout fashion, rather than print in
plain black and white the three words "The New Age" or "The New
Witness."
But there are a number of tests which show how deeply the effect of a
Free Paper of limited circulation bites in. Here is one apparently
superficial test, but a test to which I attach great importance
because it is a revelation of how minds work. Certain phrases peculiar
to the Free Journals find their way into the writing of all the rest.
I could give a number of instances. I will give one: the word
"profiteer." It was first used in the columns of "The New Age," if I
am not mistaken. It has gained ground everywhere. This does not mean
that the mass of the employees upon daily papers understand what they
are talking about when they use the word "profiteer," any more than
they understand what they are talking about when they use the words
"servile state." They commonly debase the word "profiteer" to mean
some one who gets an exceptional profit, just as they use my own
"Eye-Witness" phrase, "The Servile State," to mean strict regulation
of all civic life--an idea twenty miles away from the proper
signification of the term. But my point is that the Free Press must
have had already a profound effect for its mere vocabulary to have
sunk in thus, and to have spread so widely in the face of the rigid
boycott to which it is subjected.
XVI
Much more important than this clearly applicable test of vocabulary is
the more general and less measurable test of programmes and news. The
programme of National Guilds, for instance--"Guild Socialism" as "The
New Age," its advocate in this country, has called it--is followed
everywhere, and is everywhere considered. Journalists employed by
Harmsworth, for instance, use the idea for all it is worth, and they
use it more and more, although it is as much as their place is worth
to mention "The New Age" in connection with it--as yet. And it is the
same, I think, with all the efforts the Free Press has made in the
past. The propaganda of Socialism (which, as an idea, was so
enormously successful until a few years ago) was, on its journalistic
side, almost entirely conducted by Free Papers, most of them of small
circulation, and all of them boycotted, even as to their names, by the
Official Press. The same is true of my own effort and Mr. Chesterton's
on the "New Witness." The paper was rigidly boycotted and never
quoted. But every one to-day talks, as I have just said, of "The
Servile State," of the "Professional Politician," of the "Secret Party
Funds," of the Aliases under which men hide, of the Purchase of
Honours, Policies and places in the Government, etc., etc.
More than this: one gets to hear of significant manoeuvres, conducted
secretly, of course, but showing vividly the weight and effect of the
Free Press. One hears of orders given by a politician which prove his
fear of the Free Press: of approaches made by this or that Capitalist
to obtain control of a free journal: sometimes of a policy initiated,
an official document drawn up, a memorandum filed, which proceeded
directly from the advice, suggestion, or argument of a Free Paper
which no one but its own readers is allowed to hear of, and of whose
very existence the suburbs would be sceptical.
Latterly I have noticed something still more significant. The action
of the Free Press takes effect sometimes _at once_. It was obvious in
the case of the Spanish Jew Vigo, the German agent. On account of his
financial connections all the Official Press had orders to call him
French under a false name. One paragraph in the "New Witness" broke
down that lie before the week was out.
XVII
Next consider this powerful factor in the business. _The truth
confirms itself._
Half a million people read of a professional politician, for instance,
that his oratory has an "electric effect," or that he is "full of
personal magnetism," or that he "can sway an audience to tears or
laughter at will." A Free Paper telling the truth about him says that
he is a dull speaker, full of commonplaces, elderly, smelling strongly
of the Chapel, and giving the impression that he is tired out;
flogging up sham enthusiasm with stale phrases which the reporters
have already learnt to put into shorthand with one conventional
outline years ago.[1]
Well, the false, the ludicrously false picture designed to put this
politician in the limelight (as against favours to be rendered), no
doubt remains the general impression with most of those 500,000
people. The simple and rather tawdry truth may be but doubtfully
accepted by a few hundreds only.
But sooner or later a certain small proportion of the 500,000 actually
_hear_ the politician in question. They hear him speak. They receive a
primary and true impression.
If they had not read anything suggesting the truth, it is quite upon
the cards that the false suggestion would still have weight with
them, in spite of the evidence of their senses. Men are so built that
uncontradicted falsehood sufficiently repeated does have that curious
power of illusion. A man having heard the speech delivered by the old
gentleman, if there were nothing but the Official Press to inform
opinion, might go away saying to himself: "I was not very much
impressed, but no doubt that was due to my own weariness. I cannot but
believe that the general reputation he bears is well founded. He must
be a great orator, for I have always heard him called one."
But a man who has even once seen it stated that this politician was
_exactly what he was_ will vividly remember that description (which at
first hearing he probably thought false); physical experience has
confirmed the true statement and made it live. These statements of
truth, even when they are quite unimportant, more, of course, when
they illuminate matters of great civic moment, have a cumulative
effect.
I am confident, for instance, that at the present time the mass of
middle-class people are not only acquainted with, but convinced of,
the truth, that, long before the war, the House of Commons had become
a fraud; that its debates did not turn upon matters which really
divided opinion, and that even its paltry debating points, the
pretence of a true opposition was a falsehood.
This salutary truth had been arrived at, of course, by many other
channels. The scandalous arrangement between the Front Benches which
forced the Insurance Act down our throats was an eye-opener for the
great masses of the people. So was the cynical action of the
politicians in the matter of Chinese Labour after the Election of
1906. So was the puerile stage play indulged in over things like the
Welsh Disestablishment Bill and the Education Bills.
But among the forces which opened people's eyes about the House of
Commons, the Free Press played a very great part, though it was never
mentioned in the big Official papers, and though not one man in many
hundreds of the public ever heard of it. The few who read it were
startled into acceptance by the exact correspondence between its
statement and observed fact.
The man who tells the truth when his colleagues around him are lying,
always enjoys a certain restricted power of prophecy. If there were a
general conspiracy to maintain the falsehood that all peers were over
six foot high, a man desiring to correct this falsehood would be
perfectly safe if he were to say: "I do not know whether the _next_
peer you meet will be over six foot or not, but I am pretty safe in
prophesying that you will find, among the next dozen three or four
peers less than six foot high."
If there were a general conspiracy to pretend that people with incomes
above the income-tax level never cheated one in a bargain, one could
not say "on such-and-such a day you will be cheated in a bargain by
such-and-such a person, whose income will be above the income-tax
level," but one could say; "Note the people who swindle you in the
next five years, and I will prophesy that some of the number will be
people paying income-tax."
This power of prophecy, which is an adjunct of truth telling, I have
noticed to affect people very profoundly.
A worthy provincial might have been shocked ten years ago to hear that
places in the Upper House of Parliament were regularly bought and
sold. He might have indignantly denied it The Free Press said: "In
some short while you will have a glaring instance of a man who is
incompetent and obscure but very rich, appearing as a legislator with
permanent hereditary power, transferable to his son after his death. I
don't know which the next one will be, but there is bound to be a case
of the sort quite soon for the thing goes on continually. You will be
puzzled to explain it. The explanation is that the rich man has given
a large sum of money to the needy professional politician, Selah."
Our worthy provincial may have heard but an echo of this truth, for it
would have had, ten years ago, but few readers. He may not have seen a
syllable of it in his daily paper. But things happen. He sees first a
great soldier, then a well-advertised politician, not a rich man, but
very widely talked about, made peers. The events are normal in each
case, and he is not moved. But sooner or later there comes a case in
which he has local knowledge. He says to himself: "Why on earth is
So-and-so made a peer (or a front bench man, or what not)? Why, in the
name of goodness, is this very rich but unknown, and to my knowledge
incompetent, man suddenly put into such a position?" Then he remembers
what he was told, begins to ask questions, and finds out, of course,
that money passed; perhaps, if he is lucky, he finds out which
professional politician pouched the money--and even how much he took!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A friend of mine in the Press Gallery used to represent "I have
yet to learn that the Government" by a little twirl, and "What did the
right honourable gentleman do, Mr. Speaker? He had the audacity" by
two spiral dots.
XVIII
The effect of the Free Press from all these causes may be compared to
the cumulative effect of one of the great offensives of the present
war. Each individual blow is neither dramatic nor extensive in effect;
there is little movement or none. The map is disappointing. But each
blow tells, and _when the end comes_ every one will see suddenly what
the cumulative effect was.
There is not a single thing which the Free Papers have earnestly said
during the last few years which has not been borne out by events--and
sometimes borne out with astonishing rapidity and identity of detail.
It would, perhaps, be superstitious to believe that strong and
courageous truth-telling calls down from Heaven, new, unexpected, and
vivid examples to support it. But, really, the events of the last few
years would almost incline one to that superstition. The Free Press
has hardly to point out some political truth which the Official Press
has refused to publish, when the stars in their courses seem to fight
for that truth. It is thrust into the public gaze by some abnormal
accident immediately after! Hardly had Mr. Chesterton and I begun to
publish articles on the state of affairs at Westminster when the
Marconi men very kindly obliged us.
XIX.
But there is a last factor in this progressive advance of the free
Press towards success which I think the most important of all. It is
the factor of time in the process of human generations.
It is an old tag that the paradox of one age is the commonplace of the
next, and that tag is true. It is true, because young men are doubly
formed. First, by the reality and freshness of their own experience,
and next, by the authority of their elders.
You see the thing in the reputation of poets. For instance, when A is
20, B 40, and C 60, a new poet appears, and is, perhaps, thought an
eccentric. "A" cannot help recognizing the new note and admiring it,
but he is a little ashamed of what may turn out to be an immature
opinion, and he holds his tongue, "B" is too busy in middle life and
already too hardened to feel the force of the new note and the
authority he has over "A" renders "A" still more doubtful of his own
judgment. "C" is frankly contemptuous of the new note. He has sunk
into the groove of old age.
Now let twenty years pass, and things will have changed in this
fashion. "C" is dead. "B" has grown old, and is of less effect as an
authority. "A" is himself in middle age, and is sure of his own taste
and not prepared to take that of elders. He has already long expressed
his admiration for the new poet, who is, indeed, not a "new poet" any
longer, but, perhaps, already an established classic.
We are all witnesses to this phenomenon in the realm of literature. I
believe that the same thing goes on with even more force in the realm
of political ideas.
Can any one conceive the men who were just leaving the University five
or six years ago returning from the war and still taking the House of
Commons seriously? I cannot conceive it. As undergraduates they would
already have heard of its breakdown; as young men they knew that the
expression of this truth was annoying to their elders, and they always
felt when they expressed it--perhaps they enjoyed feeling--that there
was something impertinent and odd, and possibly exaggerated in their
attitude. But when they are men between 30 and 40 they will take so
simple a truth for granted. There will be no elders for them to fear,
and they will be in no doubt upon judgments maturely formed. Unless
something like a revolution occurs in the habits and personal
constitution of the House of Commons it will by that time be a joke
and let us hope already a partly innocuous joke.
With this increasing and cumulative effect of truth-telling, even when
that truth is marred or distorted by enthusiasm, all the disabilities
under which it has suffered will coincidently weaken. The strongest
force of all against people's hearing the truth--the arbitrary power
still used by the political lawyers to suppress Free writing--will, I
think, weaken.
The Courts, after all, depend largely upon the mass of opinion. Twenty
years ago, for instance, an accusation of bribery brought against some
professional politician would have been thought a monstrosity, and,
however true, would nearly always have given the political lawyers,
his colleagues, occasion for violent repression. To-day the thing has
become so much a commonplace that all appeals to the old illusion
would fall flat. The presiding lawyer could not put on an air of
shocked incredulity at hearing that such-and-such a Minister had been
mixed up in such-and-such a financial scandal. We take such things
for granted nowadays.
XX
What I do doubt in the approaching and already apparent success of the
Free Press is its power to effect democratic reform.
It will succeed at last in getting the truth told pretty openly and
pretty thoroughly. It will break down the barrier between the little
governing clique in which the truth is cynically admitted and the bulk
of educated men and women who cannot get the truth by word of mouth
but depend upon the printed word. We shall, I believe, even within the
lifetime of those who have taken part in the struggle; have all the
great problems of our time, particularly the Economic problems,
honestly debated. But what I do not see is the avenue whereby the
great mass of the people can now be restored to an interest in the way
in which they are governed, or even in the re-establishment of their
own economic independence.
So far as I can gather from the life around me, the popular appetite
for freedom and even for criticism has disappeared. The wage-earner
demands sufficient and regular subsistence, including a system of
pensions, and, as part of his definition of subsistence and
sufficiency, a due portion of leisure. That he demands a property in
the means of production, I can see no sign whatever. It may come; but
all the evidence is the other way. And as for a general public
indignation against corrupt government, there is (below the few in the
know who either share the swag or shrug their shoulders) no sign that
it will be strong enough to have any effect.
All we can hope to do is, for the moment, negative: in my view, at
least. We can undermine the power of the Capitalist Press. We can
expose it as we have exposed the Politicians. It is very powerful but
very vulnerable--as are all human things that repose on a lie. We may
expect, in a delay perhaps as brief as that which was required to
pillory, and, therefore, to hamstring the miserable falsehood and
ineptitude called the Party System (that is, in some ten years or
less), to reduce the Official Press to the same plight. In some ways
the danger of failure is less, for our opponent is certainly less
well-organized. But beyond that--beyond these limits--we shall not
attain. We shall enlighten, and by enlightening, destroy. We shall not
provoke public action, for the methods and instincts of corporate
civic action have disappeared.
Such a conclusion might seem to imply that the deliberate and
continued labour of truth-telling without reward, and always in some
peril, is useless; and that those who have for now so many years given
their best work freely for the establishment of a Free Press have
toiled in vain, I intend no such implication: I intend its very
opposite.
I shall myself continue in the future, as I have in the past, to write
and publish in that Press without regard to the Boycott in publicity
and in advertisement subsidy which is intended to destroy it and to
make all our effort of no effect. I shall continue to do so, although
I know that in "The New Age" or the "New Witness" I have but one
reader, where in the "Weekly Dispatch" or the "Times" I should have a
thousand.
I shall do so, and the others who continue in like service will do so,
_first_, because, though the work is so far negative only, there is
(and we all instinctively feel it), a _Vis Medicatrix Naturæ_: merely
in weakening an evil you may soon be, you ultimately will surely be,
creating a good: _secondly_, because self-respect and honour demand
it. No man who has the truth to tell and the power to tell it can long
remain hiding it from fear or even from despair without ignominy. To
release the truth against whatever odds, even if so doing can no
longer help the Commonwealth, is a necessity for the soul.
We have also this last consolation, that those who leave us and attach
themselves from fear or greed to the stronger party of dissemblers
gradually lose thereby their chance of fame in letters. Sound writing
cannot survive in the air of mechanical hypocrisy. They with their
enormous modern audiences are the hacks doomed to oblivion. We, under
the modern silence, are the inheritors of those who built up the
political greatness of England upon a foundation of free speech, and
of the prose which it begets. Those who prefer to sell themselves or
to be cowed gain, as a rule, not even that ephemeral security for
which they betrayed their fellows; meanwhile, they leave to us the
only solid and permanent form of political power, which is the gift of
mastery through persuasion.
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