THE FREE PRESS.* EVERY one with a sense of humour
sympathizes with Don Quixote in his delusions because, though mistaken, he was transparently sincere. We have much the same feeling in regard to Mr. Belloo's clever and spirited crusade against what he calls the "Official Press" in the name of his Duloinea, the "Free Press," because he evidently believes in every word of his indictment, though it is in fact so wildly exaggerated as to produce an entirely false im- pression. Mr. 13elloc assumes, to begin with, that the whole of public life is thoroughly corrupt. The party system is, he thinks, a sham. The House of Commons is "a fraud." The Opposition only pretends to oppose, having privately made a bargain with the Government of the day. All the politicians, he believes, are dishonest, and live by plunder at the expense of would-be peers, company promoters, Jewish financiers, and other wealthy persons. Real power resides not in the Ministers but in a few newspaper proprietors, who make and unmake their puppets by giving or withholding publicity. The journals which take this depressing view of our institutions are the "Free Press." They are two in number, the New Age and the New Witness. The remainder of the Press, apparently both daily and weekly, is the "Official Press." We are interested to find that it includes the Spectator. The "Official Press," which is also the "Capitalist Press," is a "Pr - organization of support and favour to the system of professional
politics." It works by "the suppression of truth, the propagation of falsehood, the artificial creation of opinion, and the boycott of inconvenient doctrine," to a degree that is "at least dangerously high." It is supported and partly controlled by the large adver- tisere of the Capitalist classes, who decline, it seems, to advertise in the" Free Press." Thus the" Official Press" is, in Mr. Belloo's eyes, as corrupt and fraudulent as he would have us believe the Rouse of Commons and the Government to be. Against this Goliath there stand up the two little Davide already named, who are hampered by lack of popularity, by their " particularism " or crankiness, by the advertisers' boycott, by lack of information, and by the terrorism of the "Lawyers' Guild," but who will yet
• succeed, Mr. Belloo thinks, because they interest "the email claw through whom in the modem world ideas spread." We have tried to state Mr. Belloo's thesis fairly. It amounts to saying that all journals which do not take his jaundiced view are in a conspiracy to hide the truth from the public. He really believes that the Morning Post, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily News, the Natidn, and the Spectator, to name a few journals whose standpoints are obviously and notoriously dissimilar and antagonistic, are leagued together to keep up the pretence that we have a Government and a House of Commons which are not marionette-shows worked by financiers for their own ends. If Mr. Belloo can believe this, he can believe anything. • We cannot hope to persuade him that he is wrong any more than we could have persuaded Don Quixote that the dreamland of chivalrous romance in which he moved was not the real Castile of his own day. But lest any of our readers should be led by Mr. Belloc's confident
• Tim Pros Press. By Hilaire Bello°. London: Al(len and UUWin. (26. ed. not;] • dogmatism to doubt the evidence of their own senses, we may say that he is completely wrong as regards the Spectator, which is now, as it has always been, an independent journal subject to no external control. He charges the " Capitalist " or "Official Press" with having tried to suppress the Marconi scandals in deference to the politicians, and with having suppressed all reference to the medical profession's complaints against quack medicines in the interests of the vendors who advertise freely. On these specific charges the Spectator may plead "Not guilty," as we were among the first to comment plainly on the Marconi affair, while we have repeatedly discussed the abuse of quack medicines and do not accept their vendors' advertisements. Mr. Belloo's unkindly comparison between the Spectator's notes on affairs and "one's forced conver- sation with commercial travellers in a railway carriage" does not wound ; as it happens, the writer's last conversation with com- mercial travellers in a railway carriage turned on philosophy, for they were all Scotsmen. But the charge of illiteracy is trivial as compared with thecharge of dishonesty. The other journals that we have named could, we are sure, defend themselves against Mr. Belloo's attacks, if they deemed it worth while, for the Spectator does not pretend to any monopoly of journalistic virtue. It is no doubt true that the two weekly journals which he dignifies by the name of "The Free Press" allow themselves a greater licence of personal invective and reckless assertion than is usual in modern newspapers of repute. But a paper's freedom ought not to be assessed by its capacity for extravagant misstatement and for wild abuse of the Jews and the politicians. That interpretation of freedom is very much like the Bolshevik's idea of liberty as the right to kill, rob, and destroy without beingpunished. It is signifi- cant that Mr. Belloo, after descanting on the peculiar merits of "The Free Press," admits in the end that it cannot hope, for the time, to achieve more than a negative result. "We shall enlighten and, by enlightening, destroy. We shall not provoke public action, for the methods and instincts of corporate civic action have disappeared."
The pity of it is that Mr. Belloc's extravagance and lack of proportion obscure the truth that lies hidden in his whirling words. He has generalized from a few particular instances, as he would not do if he were writing an historical essay, and he has thus diverted attention from the real dangers which menace the Press and the public. It is absurd to describe all British journals except two as " Official " and to denounce them. as corrupt and dishonest. But It would be legitimate to point out that the concentration of many newspapers in the hands of a single owner who is credited with political ambition may for a time be perilously misleading to the public and the Government. The control of this series of mega- phones has been used with disastrous results to interfere with the naval and military, as well as with the political, conduct of the war. There can be no doubt that the present Ministry has been greatly weakened by its intimate relations with newspaper proprietors who have attacked its chief public servants, one after the other. Yet it must be remembered that if the party system, which Mr. Belloo detests, were now in operation, the Prime Minister would not have to depend, as he does, chiefly on newspaper support. Again, there is some truth in what Mr. 13elloo says about the advertisement "subsidy." But no self-respecting editor would allow his policy to be modified by a hair's-breadth at the instance of an advertiser. Experience shows that the newspaper which declines to be overawed by the shady advertiser gains in the long run by asserting its independence, and the best and most successful journals are in fact entirely free from any such dictation as that to which Mr. Belloo imagines they are subject. He is on surer ground when he laments the decline of that old relationship between proprietor and editor which was based on mutual confidence and had excellent results. It was like the relationship between a yachts- man and his skipper, who, being told to make for a certain port, is left to steer his own course. Men like Delano would never have achieved such fame for themselves and their newspapers if they had not been left in entire control, free from the interference of a pro- prietor who might want at any moment to denounce one public servant or to glorify another. Mr. Belloo produces a wrong im- pression by suggesting that the old relationship is extinct. But a few newspaper proprietors have undoubtedly done much to destroy the sound tradition on which the success of British journalism was largely based. Lastly, we must say that Mr. Bello° overestimates the power of the Press, " official " or " free," to create publics opinion, and underestimates the intelligence of the public. British people, even the townsfolk whom he despises, still like to think for them- selves, and read their newspapers rather for their news than for their views. Throughout the war they have remained perfectly calm and resolute, despite the many hot and cold fits of the sensa- tional Press, whose influence, though not inconsiderable, is far slighter than it supposes.
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