The free press

THE FREE PRESS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE PATH TO ROME

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THE FREE PRESS

BY

HILAIRE BELLOC

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN k UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C 1

^/

First published in igiS

{All rights rcservcif)

DEDICATION

Kings Land,

Shipley, Horsham.

October 14, 1 91 7.
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. Vet we

39S046

Vi DEDICATIOxN

discover these two papers with their Umited 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 con-
vinced 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.

DEDICATION vii

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 dis-
cussion 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 tv^ro 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 cen-
tury, already dissolving to-day, would long ago

2 THE FREE PRESS

hay e. 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 obser-
vation 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 FREE PRESS 3

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 solu-
tion 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 contempo-
raneously with Capitalism and Finance : it
has erown with them and served them. It
came to the height of its power at the same
modern moment as did they.

4 THE FREE PRESS

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 (com-
monly daily sheets) of ( i ) news and (2) sug-
gested 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

THE FREE PRESS 5

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 exte^ision with
which repeated spoken words could not
compete. In the second place, it gave them
a 7nechanical 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

6 THE FREE PRESS

roof of the house fell in. An imao^inative
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 throuo^h in a mass of blazintr rubbish.
Our common sense and our knowledge of
the situation incline us rather to the bad than
to the o^ood witness, and we are rio^ht. 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 testi-
mony 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 im-
pression 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 im-
pression. Their adherence to it corroborates
his own. Even therefore when the dissemi-

THE FREE PRESS 7

nator 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 suoraested ideas.
00

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 pecu-
liar power because it bears a sort of detach-
ment, 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.

8 THE FREE PRESS

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, thev 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.

THE FREE PRESS

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 chanored
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 loo miles
away. Papers printed as far from London

lo THE FREE PRESS

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 dally 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 1 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

THE FREE PRESS ii

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, men-
tally (and often physically) starved.

IV

Meanwhile, there had appeared in connec-
tion with this new institution, ''The Press,"
a certain factor of the utmost importance :
Capitalist also in origin, and, therefore, inevi-
tably exhibiting all the poisonous vices of
Capitalism as its effect flourished from more
to more. This factor was subsidy through
advertisenie7tt.

At first the advertisement was not a subsidy.
A man desiring to let a thing be known could

12 THE FREE PRESS

let it be known much more widely and im-
mediately 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. Advertise-
ment revenue made it possible for a man to
print a paper at a cost of 2d. and sell it
at id.

In the simple and earlier form of adver-
tisement the extent and nature of the circula-
tion 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.

THE FREE PRESS 13

When It was discovered how powerful the
effect of suggestion upon the readers of adver-
tisements 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 les-
sening 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 develop-
ment 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 id. or the Jd. 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 circula-
tion, was everywhere a venture or a property
dependent wholly upon its advertisers. It had
ceased to consider its public save as a bait

14 THE FREE PRESS

for the advertiser. It lived {in this phase)
entirely on its advertisement columns.

V

Let us halt at this phase in the develop-
ment of the thing to consider certain other
changes which were on the point of appear-
ance, 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 Capital-
ist owning the sheet would necessarily consider
his revenue from advertisement before any-
thing 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

THE FREE PRESS 15

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 de-
scribing how they were made, wi'thout 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 touchino; the stuff he recommended for
pay.

As with patent medicines so with any other
matter whatsoever that was advertised. How-
ever bad, shoddy, harmful, or even treason-

i6 THE FREE PRESS

able the matter might be, the proprietor was
always at the choice of publishing matter
which did not affect him, and saving his for-
tune, 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 some-
thing 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 FREE PRESS 17

The large advertiser still viainly 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 be-
tween 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 refusine
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 supp^^ession
of news.

3

i8 THE FREE PRESS

We must not exaggerate this element. For
one thing the power represented by the great
CapitaHst 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 oramblinor 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 adver-
tisement.

The newspaper owner and the advertiser,

THE FREE PRESS 19

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 Capi-
talist kind, in motive and manner, with the
owners of the papers. Their power does

20 THE FREE PRESS

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 id. 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

THE FREE PRESS 21

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 ihe 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 West-
minster) 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
rrjost 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, /irs/, as a doctrine

22 THE FREE PRESS

plausible and arguable ; next, as a tradition
no longer in touch with reality ; lastly, as an
hypocrisy still pleading truth, a certain defini-
tion of the functions of the Press ; a doctrine
which we must thoroughly grasp before pro-
ceedinor 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,

THE FREE PRESS 23

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 itselt
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 li7nit of outrageous contradiction to known
truths beyond which it cannot go without
heavy financial loss through failure of circula-
tion, 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

24 THE FREE PRESS

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 manu-
facture interest, but there are certain broad
currents in human affairs which neither a
newspaper proprietor nor any other human
beinof can control. If EnHand is at war no
newspaper can boycott war news and live.
If London were devastated by an earthquake
no advertising power in the Insurance Com-
panies 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 '8o's or so — most news printed was really
news about things which people wanted to

THE FREE PRESS 25

understand. Howev^er 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 arti-
ficially 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.

y

26 THE FREE PRESS

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 limita-
tions.

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 news-
paper 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

THE FREE PRESS 27

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 workinof classes as^ainst their masters in
the matter of Chinese Labour in South
Africa.

The Fabian movement, which was a draw-
ing-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 com-
pel its discussion, and they have by now
canalized the whole thinof 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

28 THE FREE PRESS

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 news-
papers 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 fran-
chise, or why they so blindly hated the Chris-
tian 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 uncom-
fortable. You may say that no one news-
paper 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

THE FREE PRESS 29

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 boy-
cott it they did — as long as they could. But it
was too much for them. They were swept
off their feet. There were ofreat meetinofs 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
main/y 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 19 14 the Cabinet in-
trigue to abandon our Allies at the begin-

/

30 THE FREE PRESS

ning of the war have long since been com-
pelled 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 pro-
fessional politicians who hold nominal author-
ity : in a word, the newspaper owner controls
the professional politician because he can and
does blackmail the professional politician, es-
pecially 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 cir-
culation— by interesting that public and even
by flattering It that It has Its opinions re-
flected— 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 Capi-
talist Press Is merely a channel for the
propagation of such news as may suit its

THE FREE PRESS 31

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 dis-
cussion of interest to the common-weal sup-
pressed, spontaneous opinion boycotted, and
artificial opinion produced.

VIII

I say that our interest lies in the ques-
tion of degree. It always does. The philo-
sopher 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 know-
ledo^e of the world around us — that the degfree
to which the suppression of truth, the propa-
gation 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

32 THE FREE PRESS

give dozens of examples from his own ex-
perience of perfectly sensible letters to the
Press, citing irrefutable testimony upon mat-
ters 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 straight-
forward, 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 sub-
stitute has only been a putting of them into the
limelight in another and more grotesque

THE FREE PRESS 33

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 medio-
crities, because their power to govern depends /
upon keeping in the limelight the men whom "
they control.

4

y

34 THE FREE PRESS

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 com-
monwealth, 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 vio-
lence and is always completely misunder-
stood— 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. / did not find a single one who
knew that it was a lock-out at all i The few
who did at least know the difference between a
strike and a lock-out, all thought it was a strike!

THE FREE PRESS 35

Let no one say that the disgusting false-
hoods 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

36 THE FREE PRESS

with it, but hozv did thev deal with it? With
a mass of advocacy in favour of this pro-
fessional politician or that ; with a mass of
unco-ordinated advices ; and, above all, with
a mass of nonsense about the immense earn-
ings 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 mv 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.

THE FREE PRESS 37

This is not a querulous complaint against
evils that are human and necessary, and there-
fore 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 poli-
ticians. The new governing Press is an

38 THE FREE PRESS

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 govern-
ment 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 organi-
zation of support and favour to the system
of professional politics which colours the whole
of our great Capitalist papers to-day in Eng-
land. This gives them so distinct a character
of parliamentary falsehood, and that falsehood
Is so clearly dictated by their connection with
executive powfer that they merit the title
'' Official."

The regime under which we are now living
is that of a Plutocracy which has gradually

THE FREE PRESS 39

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

40 - THE FREE PRESS

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 every-
thing 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 deliber-
ately 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

THE FREE PRESS 41

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 exist-
ence 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

42 THE FREE PRESS

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 uneasi-
ness. 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 In-
formation. 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 g,nd unscrupulous among them — whose

THE FREE PRESS 43

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
cramblinof adventurers of this sort are known
and responsible (as they are in professional
politics) their power is a grave danger. Pos-
sessing 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

44 THE FREE PRESS

evil, that is, affecting the State, and proceed-
incr from the will of man — not from un-
governable 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
chanofe 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

THE FREE PRESS 45

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 EngHsh 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 pro-
duced more than one organ of the sort,
Scotland one or two. Their number will
increase.

With this I pass from the just denuncia-
tion 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 argu-

46 THE FREE PRESS

ment 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 sins^le 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 its 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
Truths and the third motive was (C) Indig-
nation against irresponsible power : the sense of
oppression which an immoral irresponsibility
in power breeds among those who are un-
happily subject to it.

Let us take each of these in their order.

THE FREE PRESS 47

XI

A

The motive of Propaganda (which began
to work much the earHest of the three) con-
cerned ReHgions, and also certain racial
enthusiasms or political doctrines w^hich, 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
PVance) were that of a very large majority
in the State. The " organs of opinion "

48 THE FREE PRESS

professed a genteel Ignorance of that idea
which was most widespread, most intense,
and most formative. Nor could it be other-
wise 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 com-
pelled the creation of a Free Press in con-
nection with this one motive of religion.

Men came across very little of this in
England, because England was for long vir-
tually 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 mean-
ingless 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.

THE FREE PRESS 49

This same motive of Propaganda later
launched other papers in defence of enthu-
siasms other than strictly religious enthu-
siasms, 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 con-
viction 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.

5

50 THE FREE PRESS

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 move-
ment with a particular character to which I
shall later refer when I come to its dis-
abilities.

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 found-
ing his splendidly fighting newspaper, which
had so prodigious an effect in France, felt no
particular animosity against the " Debats,"
for instance ; his particular Catholic enthu-
siasm 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 Switzer-

THE FREE PRESS 51

land Democratic. And they said it because
they arose after the CapitaHst 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 ''representa-
tive " 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

52 THE FREE PRESS

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 Eng-
land and France alone to this motive of Propa-
ganda, one finds many ''side shows," as it
were, beside the main motives of local or race

THE FREE PRESS 53

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 lono- 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 Propa-
gandist 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 particu-
larism.

54 THE FREE PRESS

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 ^'Trlbuna"!
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 propa-
ganda : because It came later than the official
Press of Capitalism, and was, in its origins,
but a reaction against it.

THE FREE PRESS 55

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 delibe-
rately 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 orentleman and dined

o

out, the proprietor who was a lord and nervous
when he met a grentleman. It changed in
the nineties of the last century or the late
eighties. It had disappeared by the 1900's.

^

56 THE FREE PRESS

The editor became (and now is) a mere
mouthpiece of the proprietor. Editors suc-
ceed 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 develop-
ments— 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

THE FREE PRESS 57

find the Free Press directed by men of intelli-
gence and cultivation — of exceptional intelli-
orence and cultivation. And that is where it
contrasts most with its opponents.

But only a little later than this second
motive of indionation au^ainst falsehood and
acting with equal force (though upon fewer
men) was the third motive of freedom : of
indignation against arbitrary Poiver.

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 cor-
rupt) 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.

58 THE FREE PRESS

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 circu-
lated popular newspaper could, and did, black-
mail the professional politician : make or
unmake the professional politician by grant-
ing 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

THE FREE PRESS 59

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 re-
action : 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 dis-
abilities under which this reaction — the Free
Press — suffered.

I think these disabilities lie under four
groups.

(i) In the first place, the free journals
suffered from the difificulty which all true
reformers have, that they have to begin by
going against the stream.

(2) In the second place they suffered from

6o THE FREE PRESS

that character of particularism or ''cranki-
ness," 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 advertise-
ment 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 arbi-
trary 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 estab-
lished itself to-day.

I say that in the first place the Free Press,
being a reformer, suffered from what all

THE FREE PRESS 6i

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 thingf 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 ridi-
culing 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

62 THE FREE PRESS

disabilities of (2) particularism, (3) poverty,
(4) insufficiency (to which I add, in this
country, restraint by the political lawyers), it
was otherwise.

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 par-
ticular 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 "Humanite"; the most
violent French Revolutionary papers I can
get, such as ''La Guerre Sociale " ; the
Royalist ''Action Franqaise"; the anti-Semitic
"Libre Parole," and so forth.

If I want to find out what is really happen-

THE FREE PRESS 63

ing 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.

64 THE FREE PRESS

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 pro-
duced an or^an 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 power-
ful writers living, and w^hen he points out in

THE FREE PRESS 65

the " Action Fran^aise " 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 vigor-
ously 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 propa-
ganda by Brailsford, or applauds Lane

6

66 THE FREE PRESS

under the alias of '' Norman Angell," it is
— in my view — eccentric and even con-
temptible. ''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 h
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 dis-
ability of a restricted audience.

There are some men (and I count myself
one) who will read anything, however much

THE FREE PRESS (,^

they differ from its tone and standpoint, in
order to obtain more knowledo^e. 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 sympa-
thetic with their own. The Free Press, there-
fore, so Ion* 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 con-
verted. It does get hold of a certain out-
side 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

68 THE FREE PRESS

where their goods will find the best market) ;
but much more from frank enmity against
the existence of any F>ee 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 adver- 4
tisements 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 I
Press cannot give in space and quality of f
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 PVee Press is indirectly sup-
ported 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

THE FREE PRESS 69

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 hio^her 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 con-
versation with equals, and one's forced con-
versation 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 boy-
cott 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.

70 THE FREE PRESS

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 my-
self, 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.

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 ob-

tammg.

Information is obtained either at great ex-
pense through private agents, or else by
favour through official channels, that is, from

THE FREE PRESS 71

the professional politicians. The Official Press
makes and unmakes the politicians. There-
fore, 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 enerorles 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.

72 THE FREE PRESS

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 un-
checked 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 sen-
tencing to one of the most terrible punishments
known to all civilized Europe — twelve months

THE FREE PRESS 73

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 com-
pelled 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 be-
come (to its own hurt as it will find) hardly

74 THE FREE PRESS

distinguishable from the complex of profes-
sional 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 excep-
tionally 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

THE FREE PRESS 75

case of independent action by the lawyers
against the poHticians, 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 tha*". is
only a negative evil. More serious is the
positive side of the affair : that you may con-
versely 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

76 THE FREE PRESS

he was made, to whom he often belongs, and
upon whom his general position to-day de-
pends). 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 poli-
ticians we all know what follows.

The instrument used is that of an accusa-
tion 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

THE FREE PRESS ^^

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 exaofoferate. It would still be
impossible for the politicians, for instance,
to o^et a verdict durino- 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 exer-
cise 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 un-
happily intertwined with the whole machinery
of Executive Government, we have in modern
England an executive controlling the expres-
sion 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

78 THE FREE PRESS

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 miorht be to the commonwealth. And
the fear which restrains him is the fear of
destruction which the combination of the pro-
fessional politician and lawyer holds in its
hand. There is not one such editor who
could not bear witness to the numerous occa-
sions on which he had, however courageous
he might be, to forgo the telling of a truth
which was of vital value, because its publica-
tion 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

THE FREE PRESS 79

and in the resistance it must overcome, the
Free Press will probably increase in power,
and may, in the lono^ 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.

1 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 Chester-
ton) 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 ob-
taining information ; of the difficulty in distri-

8o THE FREE PRESS

bution, 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 poli-
ticians 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 pronounce-
ments whether it agrees or disagrees with

THE FREE PRESS 8i

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 down-
wards, 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 hun-
dred retain this and nothing more, because the
matter below is but a flaccid expansion of
the headline.

7

82 THE FREE PRESS

Now the Headline suggests, of course, a fact
(or falsehood) with momentary power. So
does the Poster. But the mere fact of de-
pendence 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.

THE FREE PRESS S^

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 con-
clusions and vocabulary of a restricted leisured
bodv.

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
weakeninor — that the editors of, and writers
upon, the Free Papers probably underestimate
their own effect even now. They are nevei
mentioned in the great daily journals. It is
almost a point of honour with the Official

84 THE FREE PRESS

Press to turn a phrase upside down, or, if
they must quote, to quote in the most round-
about 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-

THE FREE PRESS 85

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 pro-
grammes and news. The programme of
National Guilds, for instance — "Guild Social-
ism" as "The New Age," its advocate in
this country, has called it — Is followed every-
where, and is everywhere considered. Jour-
nalists 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 —

86 THE FREE PRESS

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 mv
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 memoran-

THE FREE PRESS ^y

dum 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 exist-
ence 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 Wit-
ness " 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

SS THE FREE PRESS

Free Paper telling the truth about him says
that he is a dull speaker, full of common-
places, 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 con-
ventional outline years ago/

Well, the false, the ludicrously false picture
designed to put this politician in the lime-
light (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 doubt-
fully accepted by a few hundreds only.

But sooner or later a certain small propor-
tion of the 500,000 actually /lear the politi-
cian 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

^ 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.

THE FREE PRESS 89

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 weari-
ness. I cannot but believe that the oreneral
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 state-
ments of truth, even when they are quite
unimportant, more, of course, when they
illuminate matters of great civic moment, have
a cumulative effect.

1 am confident, for instance, that at the
present time the mass of middle-class people
are not only acquainted with, but convinced

90 THE FREE PRESS

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 divicied 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 scan-
dalous 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 FREE PRESS 91

The man who tells the truth when his col-
leagues 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 false-
hood 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 pre-
tend 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.

92 THE FREE PRESS

A worthy provincial might have been
shocked ten years ago to hear that places in
the Upper House of Parliament were regu-
larly 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 legis-
lator with permanent hereditary power, trans-
ferable 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 norm.al in each
case, and he is not moved. But sooner or

THE FREE PRESS 93

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 !

XVHI

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 disappoint-
ing. 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

94 THE FREE PRESS

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 strono^ and couraoreous 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 imme-
diately 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

THE FREE PRESS 95

is the factor of time in the process of human
g^enerations.

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 con-
temptuous 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,

96 THE FREE PRESS

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 Universitv ^ve or six vears
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

THE FREE PRESS 97

formed. Unless something like a revolution
occurs In the habits and personal constitu-
tion of the House oi^ Commons It will by
that time be a joke and let us hope already
a part!}' 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 arbi-
trary 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

8

98 THE FREE PRESS

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 cyni-
cally 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.

THE FREE PRESS 99

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 res^ular sub-
sistence, 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 pro-
duction, 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 eff'ect.

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

loo THE FREE PRESS

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 In-
tended 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 Dis-

THE FREE PRESS loi

patch" or the " Tiijies " ' I should ,have a
thousand.

I shall do so, and the others who continue
in like service will do so, fii^st, because,
though the work is so far negative only,
there is (and we all instinctively feel it), a
Vis Medicatrix N'atunr : merely in weaken-
ing 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 igno-
miny. 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 WTiting cannot sur-
vive 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

I02 THE FREE PRESS

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prose- vfhich- it tegets.-v, Those who prefer to
sell themselves or to be cowed gain, as a
rule, not even that ephemeral security for
which they betrayed their fellow^s ; 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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