THE LIMITS OF PRESS POWER. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR."] ,SIR, —Your article upon "The Limits of Press Power" in your issue of March 6th deals with a question which greatly
interested Mr. Gladstone, who used to balance the powers of the Press and the Platform; this is scarcely more than a verbal shifting of the ground from Mr. Kennedy Jones's title, Fleet Street and Downing Street. He saw in his time how the shorthand writer, the telegraph, the printer, and the practically universal power to read were enabling the country's leaders to address the whole nation directly, and used to say of the battle : "The Platform is winning." There is irony, of course, in the fact that the Press has to a great extent had to act as the executioner of its own influence.
Incidentally I have seen little comment on the impetus given by the war to the use of the Platform and the Press as a means of communications between Governments whose diplomatic relations are severed. Mr. Asquith and the German Chancellors several times adopted these means openly and directly, and you, Sir, thought that 31,r. Lloyd George was using them to address the Turkish Government in January, 1918 (but he says he was not).—I am, Sir, &c., W.
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