BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Tempora et Mores The History of " The Times." Vol. IV, Parts I and II, 1912-1948. (Times Office. 50s. the set.) Ts history of The Times is the history of the times. That is what makes the way of the historian so hard. He has, in the case of this particular work, to marshal in just proportion the events of the most momentous epoch in the life of Britain, to indicate how they were seen and presented in Printing House Square and at the same time to reveal the inner mechanism and the play of personalities in an editorial office which ranks consensu omnium as the most famous in the world. The austerely anonymous author—for the traditional anonymity of Times writers extends even to its historian—has discharged his exacting task admirably. For those coeval with him, to read his ordered and lucid pages is to re-live the experiences he recounts, rarely with need to challenge his judgements, practically never with need to question his facts. Yet he has set himself a standard almost impossibly high.
" Examples of misjudgement as to foreign affairs," he writes, in what is termed a Postscript, " are acknowledged in these pages with fidelity as to the political facts and candour as to the editorial writers. The organ that has consistently, since the time of the second Walter and Thomas Barnes, upheld the dignity of political newspaper writing may not, in the writing of its own History, pursue any other course than resolute self-examination."
No other course has been pursued. This volume, unlike its prede- cessors, deals with the writer's own professional colleagues, with all the possible embarrassment that fact entails. Yet precisely the same justice and object;v:ty are displayed in references—of the three editors whom this period covers—to Wickham Steed, who is alive, as to Geoffrey Dawson and Barrington-Ward, who are dead.
In only one particular has the author failed. He has let this volume exceed the limits of its predecessors, break itself into two parts and run to 1,048 pages of text and over one hundred of appendices; that is too much for anyone except fellow-historians eager to excavate the rich source-material here provided. Compression without appreciable loss would not have been impossible, but no doubt it would have been difficult. It is easier, as every writer of any ex- perience knows, to be prolix than concise. And into the prescribed (if exceeded) space there are tremendous happenings to be crowded —a threatened civil war in Ireland, two world wars and a social revolution at home ; in Printing House Square the shattering of century-old calm and decorum by the sudden incursion of North- cliffe, and the attempted marriage of Times traditions with the Daily Mail mind, with, for climax, the imminent prospect of acquiring in 1922 a new, and novel, editor in the person of David Lloyd George. Of these particular shocks what seems called for has been said on an earlier page of this issue of the Spectator. Here temperature and pulse-beat may be kept at normal.
When the financial situation of The Times became critical in 1908, two proprietors of popular dailies, Arthur Pearson of the Daily Express and Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail, bid for control. Northcliffe won. He had therefore been in command at Printing House Square some four years when Geoffrey Dawson was appointed Editor in succession to Buckle. It is here that these volumes open. They record no sensation like the Pigott letters, but they cover the Ulster crisis of 1914, the First War, the Peace Conference, the Irish settlement, the rise of Hitler, the Second War and the advent of the Labour Party to power in 1945. In all this the directors of the policy of The Times had to decide the eternal question how far a paper should lead and how far reflect public opinion. Actually it must do both. The Times has done both, but in a critical period, from 1930 onwards, it admittedly, in the judgement of the author of the History, failed. He is candid in his criticisms, and there is no doubt he is right. His charge is, in effect, that the paper did not lead enough and that where it did lead it led wrong. Too often its leading articles were content to cite " public opinion," " the feeling of the country " and " the average view." Barrington-Ward was the principal foreign leader-writer, but he could claim none of the experience of the great foreign editors like Mackenzie Wallace and Valentine Chirol and Steed. Moreover he had held from the first that the Treaty of Versailles was something like a moral crime and that therefore Germany was justified in resorting to any legitimate means to rid herself of its shackles ; from that it was a short distance to condoning resort to the most flagrantly illegitimate means.
The final word on policy rested with Dawson, but Dawson, it is pointed out, brought up in the Milner school, concentrated all his interest and most of his attention on Imperial affairs. He spoke no foreign language and could not bring himself to care greatly about Europe. At the same time, after the death of Harold Williams in 1928, no new Foreign Editor was appointed. The effect of that is only understood if the place held by Wallace and Chirol is realised. Not only had they immense knowledge themselves, but under their regime the foreign correspondents—Steed at Vienna, Saunders at Berlin, and Smalley at Washington—were, in addition to their published despatches, sending home long and invaluable private letters for editorial guidance ; on many aspects of world affairs The Times was frequently better informed than the Foreign Office. But in the vital 'thirties all this belonged to the past, and in the vital 'thirties The Times was consistently and disastrously wrong in its interpretations of European politics, most of all of German policy under the Nazi regime. So far from palliating that, the historian exposes the mistakes systematically and relentlessly, down to the notorious leader on Czechoslovakia in September, 1938, to which the editor (Dawson), coming in after dinner, added the fatal para- graph, envisaging, at the very climax of Hitler's threats to that most viable of the Succession States, the loss to it of its Sudeten German provinces.
Dawson, displaced by Northcliffe in 1919 in favour of Wickham Steed, displaced in turn by the Astor-Walter control, returned to his editorial post in 1922 and remained till Barrington-Ward (d. 1948) succeeded him in 1941. The historian clearly gives the higher place to the younger man, in spite of his mistaken view of Germany (and as to that there are many other writers brought to judgement in the light of the event). For Barrington-Ward The Times was not a profession but a vocation, and in its service he undoubtedly worked himself to death. Yet of the three it is Steed who emerges from these pages with enhanced stature. He, no doubt, leaned too much towards Paris, but that was better than leaning too much towards Berlin. His knowledge of international affairs was immense, and his interest in domestic social questions keen. The wisdom of replacing him by Dawson in 1922 must remain an unresolved question.
The story is carried to the end of Barrington-Ward's editorship in 1948, but it becomes slightly jejune as it nears the finish. A great deal was said earlier about the attitude of The Times towards Germany before the war, little or nothing about its surprisingly favourable attitude towards Soviet Russia during and immediately after the war. Yet no series of leading articles attracted more comment, not much of it favourable. Without some mention of this the record is
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