NE WS OF THE WEEK.
IT was announced on Tuesday that the Times is to be turned into a limited liability company under the chairmanship of Mr. Arthur Walter, and that the managing director of the new company is.to be Mr. C. A. Pearson, the well-known news- paper proprietor. Mr. Pearson, it will be remembered, was at one time Vice-President of the Tariff Reform League, and his purchase of the Standard caused no little excitement in the newspaper world some four years ago. Though Mr. Walter is to remain chairman of the company, it seems to be generally understood that the complete business control of the paper will pass to Mr. Pearson, who, it is rumoured, will remodel the organisation. The Times is so great a national institution that it is sincerely to be hoped that the old traditions will be maintained. This is specially important in the matter of foreign policy. No other paper has the prestige which belongs to the Times in handling foreign affairs, and it is also not too much to say that no paper has ever handled them with a greater sense of the public interests. Foreign countries and foreign statesmen look, and rightly look, to the Times for a just and impartial statement of their affairs, and for the reproduction of the best public opinion in England thereupon. Another great tradition of the Times has been somewhat obscured of late,— the tradition that the Times should occupy a "Left-Centre" position, and reflect the opinion, not of the cleverest men, or the most up-to-date men, or the most pushing men in the country, but of the "Left-Centre" men in all departments of national life.
