THE THUNDERER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
SIR,—As I only get The Times and The Spectator nowadays, I cannot say what sort of a press in general the Thunderer's third volume has had. But, if what Dr. Johnson would have called " the Junior Press " treat Printing House Square's autobiography as they treated the paper itself in days gone by, the book will be appreciated highly—and jeered at. For decades articles in the monthlies and quarterlies having any international bearing were based on The Times foreign telegrams. The evening papers helped themselves to The Times telegrams shamelessly. (The Evening News once lifted a half-column of Dr. Morrison's which had cost a large sum to transmit ; by the time a lawyer's letter, had reached the offender, the damage, of course, was done. No apology.) The "gossip" columns were forever throwing mud, and quoting in the same issue. The third volume has nothing of all this. It is far too dignified to whine. Through all its trouble The Times kept up its literary and editorial standard. The solicitor could write round to all the proprietors after the Parnell case and say that in future they would have to put up with a vastly decreased dividend—which was the lawyer's polite way of saying that for eight years they would not get anything at all, an exact forecast—but expensive telegrams continued to flow in from the four corners of the earth. The Old Curiosity Shop's methods were a source of much mirth—and profit—in Fleet Street. It almost seems to some of us that the compiler of the history has gone out of his way to suppress anything in the way of "inside " information redounding to the Thunderer's credit.—Your obedient servant, EDWARD STERLING. Bampton, Oxford.
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