AN ORGANISED HYPOCRISY. [To Tux EDITOR or THE "Smote:ma."' SIR,—May
I supply Mr. Wallace-Hadrill with one or two facts which should interest him P The advertisement which he quotes (and which I should be very sorry to defend) was issued when Mr. T. P. Ritzema was managing director of the Daily News, and when, as Mr. George Cadbury has publicly stated, "the control of the Daily News was absolutely in the hands, by agreement with his partner, of Mr. Ritzema." Four months later Mr. Ritzema retired and Mr. Henry Cadbury became managing director in his stead. Mr. Wallace-Hadrill may, therefore, if he thinks fit, quote the advertisement as evidence of hypocrisy on the part of Mr. Ritzema, who then owned, and still owns, an evening paper in Lancashire giving betting news and tips, but it is not evidence against Mr. Cadbury. Such evidence, so far as the Daily News is concerned, must bear a date subsequent to April, 1907, and such evidence Mr. Wpflane-Hadrill cannot find, for this kind of commercialised goody-goodyism ceased with Mr. Ritzema's directorate.
Mr. Wallace-Hadrill says he does not "profess to know whether the Rowntree-Cadbury alliance possessed their present controlling interest in the Star and Morning Leader at the time the advertisement was published." It is, of course, known to the editor of the Spectator, as to most other journalists, that that interest is of later date, but the ever- ready footnote was in this case withheld—an instance of generosity to an opponent scarcely to be attributed, I think, to the teaching of the public schools.
Mr. Wallace-Hadrill and his editorial backer have yet to show that the present directors of the Daily News and the Star hold views on this subject materially differing from those of many other newspaper proprietors who, "though they publish betting news and betting tips under the stress of competition," in the words of the Spectator, " would rather be without it, provided that a large section of their readers were not drawn away by other newspapers giving betting news and betting tips." At present they choose to exclude these things from the Daily News while giving them in the Star. Apparently the Spectator would be quite satisfied if, reconsidering their position, Messrs. Cadbury chose to bring the Daily News into line, say, with the Manchester Guardian, which does give betting news, and which, in its issue this morning, cheerfully published the odds for next month's Derby. The peculiar crime of " the Cocoa Press" is not that it accepted betting men's halfpennies for some of its journals— many other papers do that—but that, accepting them for some, it refused them for others. "A man of the world" would take a different view, and would commend the self- denying ordinance for what it did, irrespective of what it left undone. But then, the Spectator thinks it is a man of the world; that is just exactly what it is not.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A WORKING JOURNALIST.
[Are we to understand from this letter that those who now control the Daily News do not agree with the state- ments in the advertisement of 1907—statements strongly condemning betting and denouneing the ordinary news- papers for their support of betting ? If the present controllers of the Daily News are not willing to make such a declaration, then our correspondent's protest merely amounts to an allegation that they consider that it was very unwise of Mr. Ritzema to give himself, and them, away by so injudicious an advertisement as that quoted last week by Mr. Wallace-Hadrill. The truth is, of course, that Mr. George Cadbury, the chief proprietor of the Daily News, does believe incitements to betting to be gravely injurious and immoral and is proud of not having them in his morning paper. If, however, we are wrong, and Mr. George Cadbury will state publicly that he does not believe that betting is harmful, and that he considers the publication of tips and incitements to betting do no injury, and are not to be condemned, and, further, that the Press is not doing any great harm by helping and stimulating betting, then, of course, we have been most grievously in error in accusing the chief proprietor of the Daily News of hypocrisy, and we shall at once offer him our sincerest and most unqualified apologies for having mis- represented his attitude. If Mr. George Cadbury will not make such a statement, our accusation stands, and Working Journalist's " attempt to confuse the issue in defence of his friends fails.—En. Spectator.'
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