EDITORS AND WARS.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPICTATOR."]
SIR,—The following passage from Morley's Life of Cobden, p. 638 of the one-volume edition (1903), supplies an interesting comment on your expression of the opinion that " it is pure clap-trap to say that it is editors who produce wars, and the
hostile feelings between nations which end in wars " (Spectator, June 23rd, p. 969) :- " August 8, 1855. I paid a visit on Wednesday to my neighbour
the Bishop of Oxford, and met Lord Aberdeen The old Earl said: `It was not the Parliament or the public, but the Press that forced the Government into the war (ie., the Crimean War). The public mind was not at first in an uncon- trollable state, but it was made so by the Press." ' —I am, Sir, &c., F. C. POYNDER.
92 High Street, East Grinstead.
[We did not say that statesmen are not often willing to make newspaper articles an excuse for grave derelictions of duty. It is notorious that they are. The fact remains, how- ever, that the statesmen can quite well resist newspaper pressure if they care to do so. Note that Ministers usually find out that they were driven into war by the Press after they have engaged in foolish or mismanaged wars, not at the beginning of them.—ED. Spectator.]
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