TRUTH.* " ' WHAT is truth?' said jesting Pilate ;
and would not stay for an answer." Sir Charles Walston, in his new and spirited essay, is not so much concerned to find a philosophic reply to Pilate's question as to insist on the supreme value of truth in public and private relationships, and to point out the evils that flow from suppression, prevarication, and direct falsehood. He believes that " the efficient cause of the war is to be found in the defective moral standards and moral education of the civilized world," and That " moral reconstruction is at least as urgently needed as is industrial and financial readjustment." Sir Charles Walston, who is an American by birth and an Englishman by choice, says that, though " as a nation we stand highest in the comparative scale as regards our love and our practice of truth," yet " our own standard, when measured by our clearest and highest conception of what truth means and what in practice it ought to mean in the lives of individuals and of nations," is " comparatively low." The war has made matters worse. He laments the " levity of unconscionable statement " and the " uncritical credulity " that have been so often displayed. For our part, we are not inclined to judge these failings very harshly. People untrained in weighing evidence made many foolish deductions from the bare facts supplied to them. The myth-making faculty which is a part of man's nature was developed to an excessive degree under the strain of war. Moreover, each man interpreted the day's news in terms of his own temperament. The optimist always
• Truth. Ily Sir Charles Walston Waldatein). Cambridge : at the Unl- MeV Press. [5s. net.] took the rosy view ; the pessimist found small comfort in any success and derived a gloomy self-satisfaction from any reverse. The writer will never forget that during the war the most doleful pessimist of his acquaintance was a philosopher of high repute, who seemed to have a judicial mind, and who was particularly
well informed. As the philosopher was invariably wrong in regard to the outcome of particular operations, it looks as if the highly trained thinkers, whom Sir Charles Walston com- mends, were, when swayed by temperament, just as liable to error as the humblest man in the street. It may be said that in war time the truth is hard to come by, lest the enemy should profit by the facts which are disclosed. Nor does the author insist unduly on the unpleasant manifestations of the critical times through which we are passing. But his complaint against the " unconscionable statements " and the " uncritical credulity " shows that public opinion is formed, in matters of great public interest, by other means than the political speeches and the newspaper articles which he proceeds to criticize with some severity.
His plea for public veracity is necessary. In international affairs plain speaking, which need not be discourteous, would often clear the air when silence breeds suspicion. If the Peace Conference could have had a few public debates on the League of Nations Covenant, the American politicians would not have misunderstood the attitude of this country towards their President's scheme. It is conceivable that, if the Cabinet before 1914 had not given the country to suppose that the Germans were a peace-loving nation while they were really arming to the teeth, the Great War might have been postponed or averted. In domestic politics the author directs attention to the abuse of " privileged statements " in which the truth is often perverted to the injury of an individual or a class. The proceedings of the Coal Commission, for example, have afforded many instances of the kind. The leadng questions put by Mr. Smillie have caused credulous people to think of a coal-owner as a soulless money-maker and of a collier as a half-starved wretch living in a hovel. The picture is imaginary, of course, but there is no redress for the slander on the men whose industry and enterprise have developed the coal trade and given employment at high wages to Mr. Smillie's followers.
Sir Charles Walston, however, regards despots of the old and the new type as necessarily untruthful. He concentrates
his attention on the ordinary democratic forces—politician, millionaire, and journalist—" whose influence can be traced to the detriment of the prevalence of truth." As for the politician- " The absorption of the end of government into the means of governing and its machinery is so great that even these leaders [the chief modern statesmen] have often deliberately turned or involuntarily drifted from the road which leads to the highest democratic form of government to the tortuous by-paths of party management and political trickery ; further- more, that their knowledge of the facts of economic, social, and political life was incomplete, often superficial, and characterized by both haste and opportunism—in one word, that they were wanting in the strong and refined sense of truth."
The millionaire, as an irresponsible potentate who endows Universities and owns newspapers, seems to the- author to be a public danger. He would not exclude newspaper-owners from office, but he would have them openly identified with the opinions which they cause to be published. Moreover,
if they take office, " they ought conscientiously and effectively to sever all connexion with the newspapers in which they have been interested, and in no way use them, directly or indirectly,
to enforce their own opinions." This is a counsel of perfection. In regard to the practical question whether a newspaper-owner who is a member of the Government should cause his journals to attack his own colleagues, Sir' Charles Walston quotes Lord Northeliffe's statement of April, 1918, to the effect that, though he was Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, he was not a member of the Government, and had " declined to become one, in order that his newspapers may be free to speak plainly about certain aspects of the political and military situation." On this he comments :- " It will be seen that a newspaper proprietor, whose several newspapers are of exceptional power in directly forming or influencing public opinion in accordance with his personal opinions, accepts direct official work under the Government, yet surprisingly—or at least with astonishing nalvete—refuses to become responsible for these opinions to the public in the ordinary system of political responsibility adopted by all democratic countries.'
Sir Charles Walston elsewhere expresses a desire " to bear
testimony to the patriotic intentions of Lord Northcliffe and to the important work in many directions achieved by him during the war." " It is possible," he adds, " that, in the future, history may confirm the claim which he may have established to the gratitude of the country. But the system itself remains wrong and a growing evil "—the system, that is, of privately owned newspapers. Sir Charles Walston does not, however, suggest a practicable alternative, for we cannot think that a State newspaper would commend itself to the public.
The author is very hard on journalists, and goes so far as to say that " there has been a steady degeneration of character and tone in English journalism within the last thirty years." Such a statement reminds us of the complaint made to an editor of Punch that "Punch is not so good as it used to be," and of his immortal reply, " It never was ! " We feel sure that if any impartial person cared to look up the newspaper files of the " eighties " he would not find any appreciable difference in the character and tone of the journalism of that time, though there were fewer headlines and less personal gossip. The newspaper-reading public has increased in the interval as a result of the educational reforms of the " seventies," but it is a profound mistake to suppose that the working man has required modern journalists to be more flippant than their predecessors were. The working man is a most serious and earnest reader. We must add that the journalistic profession in recent years has attracted highly educated men and women to a greater extent than ever before, and the leading newspapers are consequently better informed and more accurate in detail than they used to be. Sir Charles Walston thinks that the journalist's aim is " to provide the earliest news, the most sensational news, in the most sensational form, Which will arrest the attention of the reader," that " in this race for priority of publication the careful weighing and testing of facts in order to-ensure truth are impossible, and that haste of state- ment is not only not conducive to the establishment of truth, but that it is a factor which itself undermines the moral and intellectual quality of thoroughness essential to a truth-loving nature." There are, of course, some reckless and short-sighted editors who will publish anything new without waiting to find out if it is true. But we can assure Sir Charles Walston that these unprincipled men are- despised by their profession. Apart altogether from the immorality of publishing dubious statements, experience shows that newspapers which are persistently wrong do not profit in the long run. The public learns to distinguish the journal which is accurate from the 'journal which prints mere rumours without verifying them. It may be said incidentally that many of these rumours are telegraphed from abroad, especially the minor capitals of Europe, where the standard of veracity seems to be infinitely lower than in this country, and that experienced journalists know by instinct the worthlessness of such sources of information.
Sir Charles Walston would seek a remedy partly in a State Department to give out " truthful information and news," partly by suppressing articles and comments on topics of the day. We cannot think that the public has been so favourably impressed by the efforts of the Government to supply news during the war as to desire a State monopoly of news-gathering. The German Government, throtigh the notorious Wolff Bureau, aimed at such a monopoly before the war, and thus prevented their people from learning the truth about foreign affairs. As for comment, there is no reason to suppose that, because it is hastily written, it is misleading. It all depends upon the commentator. The public -demands something more than a bare statement of fact. If foreign telegrams, for example, were published as they are received, very few readers would be able to interpret them accurately. Some explanation is therefore desirable ; and, if the matter be of sufficient importance, some comment is called for. The reader will naturally form his own conjectures, and he is not likely to know so much -about the subject as the man whose business it is to follow the course of events all over the world. Sir Charles Walston recurs again and again to the theory that what is hastily written is worthless. But it is only a matter of practice to acquire speed in marshalling one's thoughts and giving expression to them. Provided always that the journalist is competent and well informed, it-does not matter whether he takes two hours or two days to produce his article. Sir Charles Walston would have us return to the signed pamphlet as " the best form in which opinions and judgments can be adequately expressed by those qualified to hold them" ; but not every pamphleteer is a good writer or a dispassionate purveyor of truth. We conclude, then, that while Sir Charles Walston is right in fearing the influence of wealthy newspaper proprietors, he is wrong in maintaining that journalists as a class are leas concerned than scholars to maintain a high standard of veracity. Where politics are concerned—and, after all, the mass of journalistic comment has to do with domestic politics—a Solomon might be puzzled to know how to disentangle truth from the prejudice, the ambition, the class-interest, and the party passion which confuse the vision of many active politicians. We can only hope that out of the clash of conflicting opinions the truth may become manifest to the people at large.
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