1909.]

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or from what the French call morgue, it is our habit to underrate our energies and achievements. We are never so happy as when we are assuring friends and foes alike that we are fast asleep. So often have we declared, with a sort of false pride, our reign over, that we are beginning to obtain a general credence. We are no hustlers, that is to say, we are still capable of making an effort without noisily calling attention to it, and as a reward we have gained the reputation of drones. Now, we have not done all this on purpose. We are not cunningly attempting to blind the eyes of our rivals. It is our temperament to set about our work in silence and without a fuss, and for this we have suffered not only abroad but in our Colonies. The smile of superior contempt wherewith America greets us as a back number is not unfamiliar, and Australians there have been who have interpreted our leisurely gait as a sure sign of idleness and incompetence. And now the Delegates of the Imperial Press Conference have discovered by their own sight the falsity of the legend. The great workshops in the north of England and in Scotland have revealed to them the plain fact that Britons have lost none of their skill in handicraft, none of their energy and inventiveness, and if they carry word home that the great industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire still flourish, that the sound of innumerable hammers is still heard on the Clyde and on

The banquets have been eaten; the toasts have been duly drunk; the great houses of England are a memory; the last echo of eloquence has died away. And if we ask not of the Conference more than it can give, we may acclaim it a triumphant success. What journalists can do to correct false impressions, and to give a message of sound policy and mutual defence, will doubtless be done. But in the moment of imagined triumph let us not overrate the power of the Press. Even though the delegates never again write of England with lack of sympathy or ignorance of the plain facts, even though the country they have visited remains always pictured on their brain, there are fixed limits to what they can achieve. It is true that they are not perplexed, as are the Prime Ministers who some time since came to confer in London, by the caprice of their constituents. They are at once more independent and less responsible. They need not, unless they choose, give the public what it wants. One other plan of action is possible to them: they may, if they have the wit and the strength, compel the public to take what they choose to give them. But the Press, at the very moment of its triumph, seems, on our side the ocean at any rate, to be losing its power. Like many other institutions it has

been overdone. The more it is read, the less it is listened to. Victory does not lie on the side of big circulations. The mystery which once surrounded its craft is being pierced. The gradual extinction of the editor has not increased the influence of the newspaper. Men and women read their journals nowadays not to be instructed but to be amused. The old

tradition that a newspaper should be an entity separate from and greater than those who conduct it has died a not unnatural death; and if the same fate which has overtaken our journals pursues those of the Colonies, we shall be prudent to discount some of the effect which we hope will be produced in Canada and Australia, in India and South Africa, by the visit of the delegates. But what may be achieved by the agency of the Press has, we believe, been achieved, and the proprietors and editors who have been wont to criticise the policy and action of England, which they had not seen, will now be able to justify more accurately Mr Birrell's definition of criticism, which, said he, was the easy task of telling the truth about other people.

As it was a Conference of the Press, a little boastfulness was perhaps permissible. But it is difficult to understand what it was, if it was not policy, that persuaded Lord Morley to applaud "an enormous improvement in all the vital aspects of what journalism ought to be." We look about us and we see everywhere the signs of decay.

In style, thought, and sincerity our newspapers are infinitely worse than they were twenty or fifteen years ago. The unamiable fashions of America are fast being accepted as models for journalists. Triviality is exalted high above principle or criticism. The writers who threw a lustre on the journalism we still remember would have a vast difficulty in holding the public of to-day. Captain Shandon's ideal of a newspaper written "by gentlemen for gentlemen" is not likely to be realised for many years to come. Were it possible to revive 'The Pall Mall Gazette,' as it was conducted by Mr Greenwood, by Lord Morley himself, by Mr E. T. Cook, and by Mr Henry Cust, that repertory of admirable literature would fall dead from the press. The popular editor of our century is Paul Pry, the man who can uncover most shamelessly the secrets of others and provide every day with its sensational disclosure. And then, with a strange perversity, Lord Morley selected for special praise the province of journalism which lies most frankly exposed to blame. "As for literary criticism," he said, "there has never been so much critical power and knowledge as you will find in half a dozen quarters in English journalism today." Our observation tells another tale. We should have thought it nearer the truth to say, not that literary criticism was good or bad, but that, save in one or two neglected corners, it had ceased to exist. That which masquer

ades as criticism is generous enough, as Lord Morley tells us, but generosity is not criticism, and we should be more hopeful of the future if we saw less generosity and rather more honest censure. The modern critic cheerfully praises everything. There is no slab of illiteracy which he will not take for a masterpiece. With one or two eminent exceptions, the critics of the Press suppress their judgment at the mere sight of a new book. With an amiable smile they proclaim their "generosity," and they follow Lord Morley in denouncing invective for a crime. Thus they take a smug pride in their shortcomings, and hail as virtue what is a plain dereliction of duty. The competent critic should be a judge; and of what authority is a judge who may acquit and may not condemn? We owe it to the leniency of our critics that the world is flooded with sham history and sham fiction. No one who can read can fail to detect the imposture of the most recent craze which would turn the past into a scandal and throw the flash-light of sensational journalism upon the thrones of our kings and the deliberations of our statesmen. Not a day passes but some silly collection of courtships or love-letters is hailed with enthusiasm by an eostatic Press. It is true that not even the generosity of the critics can give life to these rag-bags of folly, but unwarranted flattery finds a place for them in the circulating library, and bids them block

the way of serious literature. Why they are kindly treated we do not know, unless it be that the publishers, whose advertisements help to support the journals, ask to be conciliated. And this habit of indiscriminate praise not merely creates a set of false reputations, it is a serious injustice to those who treat their profession and the English tongue with some measure of respect. When the generosity of critics has been lavishly spent upon books that are no books, there remains not a word of approval that can fairly be thrown at a real experiment. Thus it is that a foolish amiability has lowered the standard of literature and debased the currency of style. And we can but look forward with an insecure hope to the day when the critic shall remember that he owes a duty to truth as well as to generosity, and, stern in the conviction of a just cause, dares to revive the forgotten art of invective.

These discussions, interesting in themselves, seemed a trifle out of place at an Imperial Conference, and it was plain that the delegates, eager for defence and cheaper cablerates, heard them with impatience. After all, their concern with literature is merely accidental, and would not be mentioned but for the chance that the English language is the material, not merely of our humane letters, but also of our common speech and of the craft of journalism. This chance has persuaded many inglorious persons to

is no excuse for for so great a temerity, for a bundle of clichés is there at his hand from which he may lawfully choose. If it be his fate to write a leader, he knows the mechanism and he fashions a work which belongs, not to a person, but to a committee. If he be a reporter and the reporter is the darling of the Press it is his business to produce a foreseen effect. He does not interpret this or that scene as Hazlitt and Lamb would have interpreted it, with his own vision and in his own words; he interprets it in the terms of his journal, and what he does any other might have done just as ill. Briefly, he sees not with his eyes, but in phrases and common phrases too. And he touches nothing that he does not exaggerate. A broken leg suggests to his facile mind a field of carnage. He makes a gross scandal of the weather. He is taught from the very beginning of his career to mistake notoriety for fame. So insensitive is he, so obedient to orders, that if you sent half a dozen of him out to observe the same event, they would all bring back the same report, and it would bear a very remote resemblance to that which really happened. When Flaubert was teaching Guy de Maupassant the craft of letters, he told him that, if he described a chair, he must describe it in such terms as would separate it from all other chairs. Does not this reminiscence give us a glimmering of the difference between literature and journal

VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXV.

ism? The journalist would describe the chair which confronted his irresponsive vision as no chair ever was. He would be content to fob his readers off with a piece of furniture that existed only in the world of journalism.

For the world of journalism is a world apart and of itself. It is brilliant with colour as it is gay with scandal. No reporter can perform his work efficiently if he be not fortified with a useful trade - list of colours. He must be able to reel off such terms as Prussian Blue, Burnt Umber, Chinese Red, without the smallest excuse. He must be ready at a moment's notice to describe the "colour-scheme of a funeral, or to detect a brilliant "splash" in a surplice-clad choir. The people wants its "wordpictures pleasantly variegated, and the reporters give it what it wants. To the same end they have devised a vocabulary of their own. They delight in inexpressive polysyllables, which lend an air of pomp without committing their users to a definite statement. "Materialise" and "eventuate" are prime favourites, and will be found valuable in more senses than one to those who are paid (or should we say remunerated?) by the line.

These are some of the traits which separate the journalist from the mere man of letters, and which render the task of distinction easy. But each craftsman must be judged on his merits, and it is not quite a hopeless task to seek for literature in the columns

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