A Parliament of the Press : the First Imperial Press
Conference. (Horace Marshall and Son. 2s. 68. net.)—A Parliament of the Press forms a very interesting record of the very successful Conference at which the journalists of the Empire assembled this summer. All who had anything to do with the gathering in question will agree with the remark made by Lord Rosebery in his preface to the volume that Mr. Harry I3rittain was an admirable deviser and manager of the Conference. We also agree with his statement that the Press Conference "stands out by itself, and makes a distinct epoch in the history of our Empire." We note that in a paragraph at the beginning of the volume it is stated that most of the speeches reported have been revised by their authors, but that " this is not the case with the speeches of Lord Morley, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Winston Churchill." To this note the name of the editor of the Spectator should have been added. His speech was not revised by him, and is printed apparently exactly as the reporters were able to record a somewhat rapid utterance in a hall the acoustic properties of which are notoriously bad. The result will be for the public an amusing, if for the speaker a somewhat painful, example of the punishment which a badly reported speech may inflict. It is, of course, a very small matter, but one to which it was almost necessary for us to draw attention in these pages. Otherwise people might have been under the impression that the editor of the Spectator was one of those who had revised the reports of their speeches.
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