THE LAST newspaper casualty of 1957, Truth, went out with
its final issue containing a forlorn para- graph of announcements about the contents of its next. The paper appeared on Friday, as usual; on Saturday the editor, Mr. George Scott, was informed that no further issue would be appear- ing. I should have thought that even people with as feeble a grasp of the common courtesies as the late proprietor's executors appear to have had might have thought it proper to give Mr. Scott at least an issue's notice; he would then have had a chance to write his own obituary, so to speak. As it was, they even left it to him to notify the rest of the staff, and appeared to have no intention, until, Mr. Scott started the wires humming, of making any kind of announcement to the rest of the press; the readers, I supposes were to be left to make over a period of time the deduction that their paper had died. Few papers can have had so many ups and downs of all kinds in the course of their existence; between the radicalism of Henry Labouchere, the founder, and the very different radicalism of its last editor, Truth lived its eighty years to the full. A pity that this long, brave day should have ended with the corpse being shovelled so hastily and shabbily under- ground. The final irony is supplied by the fact that the last proprietor, Ronald Staples, who made it clear, just before his death, that Truth was not to survive him, had been greatly exercised over the manner in which Messrs. Newnes had killed John o' London's; he had attempted to buy it, only to be met with the information that no offer would be considered.
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