“The Guardian"
Srit—I write as an admirer both of the Spectator and the Guardian, and I write with real regret -to answer the paragraph in your Spectator's Notebook of December 7th. The Guardian can no longer answer for itself.
The Guardian was in fact the only Anglican weekly paper which had no party ties. It was neither Anglo-Catholic nor Evangelical, but was concerned with Christian apologetic. Its cqntributors were men of some standing in scholarship and in letters, for the most part. Its readers were chiefly clergy, one imagines, during the last years of its life, and they were men whb followed a tradition which is liberal in its widest sense ; they were more interested in truth than in beating a party drum. And the disinterested pursuit of truth within the Church is surely a quality which needs encouragement. The other two main Church papers are good papers, but they represent parties within the Church. It is surely right to lament that there are not enough liberal theologians left with the time, means or interest. to keep alive a paper which has had such outstanding qualities. The Christian Press is unquestionably poorer for the loss of the Guardian.
It is not in the Church only that the liberal outlook is dying, but in a world which is increasingly ruled by mass suggestion. I believe that the liberal outlook is more alive in the Church, still, than proportionately in the/secular world ; and the loss of the Guardian endangers the scholarly tradition of a Church—the Anglican Church—which has consistently and courageously stood for truth against those who let their minds be too easily swayed by emotion or ruled by authority.
As for the writers who have made the Guardian all it has been—in a Press which for the most part prefers tit-bits of news, and cleverly phrased reviews to scholarship—they may find themselves unable, how- ever willing, to "keep the flame alight elsewhere."—Yours faithfully, The Vicarage, Winterbourne Earls, Salisbury. H. A. BLAIR.
[Janus writes: All this is no -doubt true: I said much the same myself when the coming decease of the Guardian was first announced. In my comments last week I confined myself to suggesting, as I still suggest, that in the Guardian's rather protracted valedictions its consciousness of Its own superiority to all other religious weeklies, except two Roman Catholic ones was inordidorely, stressed. It really is better not to be self-righteous overmuch.] pfi
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