AD NOVAM. Oh, well it is that time flies high And well that all the marching hours This golden noon no shaft of light Filson Young. THE CHANCE. Words wander like motes Across your hideous sea Of yelling mouths and straining, hairy throats; O'er fists shaken so threateningly, That make a storm to dumb the voice of me. My frail unheeded message floats. I've walked about the town and by the sea, Through hoary years and years aglow with youth; You call my hopes the spawn of wizardry, And all my uttered dreams meet rage and ruth, And no one in the world believes in me. The need, the chance, the time Of History's mightiest. But when the need, the chance, and the time come, Their prophet lies deep in the old earth numb. Oh, not the man is great, but the Time cries And he who struggles first unto her feet She crowns his forehead and anoints his eyes, Gives him the heart to meet Yon scoffers with bright smiles, and true and strong Makes she his voice; upon those lips she sets JOHN DELANE AND MODERN JOURNALISM.* Journalists have been described as the Sophists of modern life; and, within certain limits, the parallel may be said to hold good. By a "journalist" we mean a man who seeks to influence public opinion in this direction or that through the columns of a daily or a weekly paper, not the invaluable and indispensable person who purveys "news," properly so-called, and the data upon which "the policy of the paper" is based. Bearing this in mind, and remembering that the proprietor, the editor, and the leader-writer are not absolutely independent of one another, but represent in most cases a combination cemented by "the policy of the paper," we can trace, not unprofitably, the parallel between the typical Athenian Sophist and the typical English journalist. Let us note first that the prototype and the counterpart are only possible under a system of government which recognizes and protects an absolute freedom of thought and expression of opinion. Further, let us admit, on the one hand, that the Sophists, as a class, did not exercise the corrupting influence attributed to them by Aristophanes and by Plato in the more Socratic passages of the various dialogues in which they are introduced; and, on the other, that they were not always the disinterested advocates of political and social reform that Grote represented them to be. Grote, in his passionate admiration-idolatry would hardly be too strong a word-for democracy in all its forms, and especially in its Athenian form, is naturally prone to exaggerate; but, when he says (ed. 1888, vol. vii, p. 30) 1. "John Thadeus Delane, Editor of the 'Times'; his Life and Correspondence." By A. I. Dasent. Two vols. London: Murray, 1908. 2. "The Great Metropolis." By James Grant. it was the blessing and the glory of Athens that every man could speak out his sentiments and criticisms with a freedom unparalleled in the ancient world, and hardly paralleled even in the modern, in which a vast body of dissent both is, and always has been, condemned to absolute silence, the exaggeration is pardonable. England, it is said, is governed by talk; and, when we remember that the Sophists were the immediate heirs of the teachers of rhetoric and dialectic, we perceive how real the parallel is. That there were some Sophists whose doctrines and methods were elevating and beneficial, and others whose influence was pernicious, is as true as the truism that there are some newspapers which instruct and enlighten their readers, and others which tend, deliberately or unconsciously, to lower the tone of public opinion. There is not more difference between the best journal of the day-whichever that may be and the worst, than there was between Isocrates and Thrasymachus as depicted in the first book of the "Republic." It must be borne in mind that Plato himself, as he becomes more Platonic and less Socratic, changes his attitude towards the Sophists. In the earlier books of the "Republic" they are charged (as indeed was Socrates himself) with being the corrupters of society, while in the later they are described as the products of a society which was itself corrupt, and invoked the aid of intellectual drugs to stimulate its depravity. One or other of these views is taken by pessimists with regard to journalism. It is said, for instance, that newspapers have created First series, vol. II. Third edition. London: Saunders and Ottley, 1838. 3. "The Government of England." By A. Lawrence Lowell. Two vols. London: Macmillan, 1908. ex a craving for sensationalism, or that, finding this morbid appetite in istence, they have pandered to it. This criticism is at best a gross exaggeration when applied to seriously conducted newspapers, but it indicates a real danger to which we will presently revert. To continue the examination of our parallel: the object of the Sophists, as it is set forth by Isocrates, was to teach young men "to think, speak, and act" with credit to themselves as citizens. If for "youth" we substitute the English political equivalent "untrained," the motto of Isocrates is one which all serious journalists would gladly adopt. It is worth while to recall a passage from the criticism of Grote's History which appeared in the "Quarterly Review" (No. clxxv), cited by Grote in a footnote (vii, 80) as "able and interesting." Ac "It is enough here to state" (said the reviewer) "as briefly as possible the contrast between Mr. Grote's view and the popular representation of the Sophists. According to the common notion, they were a sect; according to him, they were a class or a profession. cording to the common view they were the propagators of demoralizing doctrines, and of what from them are termed 'sophistical' argumentations. According to Mr. Grote, they were the regular teachers of Greek morality, neither above nor below the standard of the age. According to the common view, Socrates was the great opponent of the Sophists, and Plato his natural successor in the combat. According to Mr. Grote, Socrates was the great representative of the Sophists, distinguished from them only by his higher eminence and by the peculiarity of his life and teaching. According to the common view, Plato and his followers Prof. Rhys Davies reminds us that in the sixth century B. C., just before the birth of the Buddha, there existed in India teachers called the "Wanderers," who resembled in many ways the Greek Sophists. Like them, they differed much in intelligence, earnestness and honesty. Some are described as "eelwrigglers, hair-splitters," and this not with 1 One of the charges levelled against the Sophists-a charge especially damaging in a cultivated democracy resting upon slave-labor-was that they took money, often large sums, for teaching. It was "banausic," and in the eyes of Socrates and Plato it was simony or worse to sell "the true, the beautiful, the just." Down to the very eve of the Victorian epoch there was the same disposition to regard paid journalism with the same aversion as a vocation not fit for gentlemen. We find this fact very explicitly stated by Mr. Grant, himself a working journalist, who was responsible for a dozen volumes or so of "chatty gossip" in the thirties of the last century. His judgments do not perhaps amount to much, though he, a Liberal in politics, anticipated a great future for Disraeli when the conoscenti believed him to be a spent squib; but his value as a contemporary witness is unquestionable. We shall have several occasions for out reason. But there must have been many of a very different character. . . . So large was the number of such people that the town communities, the clans and the râjas vied one with another to provide the Wanderers with pavilions, meeting halls, and resting-places. where conversations or discussions could take place. ("Early Buddhism," p. 4.) drawing from his reservoir. In a volume dealing with "the Newspaper Press," he tells us that the character of the newspaper press of the metropolis has been greatly raised within the last quarter of a century. Before that time no man of any standing, either in the political or literary world, would condescend to write in a newspaper; or, if he did, he took special care to keep the circumstance as great a secret as if he had committed some penal offence of the first magnitude. Now, the most distinguished persons in the country not only often contribute to newspapers, but are ready to admit it, except where there may be accidental reasons for concealment. ("Great Metropolis," vol. ii, p. 164.) He adds that in his day the great majority of (Parliamentary) reporters have enjoyed the advantages of a university education, and many of them belong to the learned professions. Several of those at present in the gallery have been educated for the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Church of Rome. Some of them have been regularly ordained, and have only been induced to turn their attention to reporting because they have no immediate prospect of obtaining a respectable living in the Churches to which they respectively belong. Among the reporters are several physicians and surgeons; while a very large proportion of them are either barristers-at-law or young men studying for the bar (ib. p. 204). He cites a long list of distinguished persons who had been reporters in their day, including, of course, Dr. Johnson, whose avowal that he always "took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of the argument," mightily shocks Mr. Grant's professional conscience. Amongst the successors of Johnson he names Sir James Mackintosh, Allan Cunningham, and others; and amongst his own contemporaries he picks out Charles Dickens, already author of "Sketches by Boz" and the "Pickwick Club," who "is a reporter on the establishment of the 'Morning Chronicle,'" and of whom Mr. Grant says: I may here be permitted to remark that Mr. Dickens is one of the most promising literary young men of the present day. For an exquisite perception of the humorous he certainly has no superior among contemporary writers. He further tells us that "almost all the editors of the daily papers have been reporters." John Delane served an apprenticeship in "the gallery"; and his predecessor, Barnes, had been a reporter. Stenography has caused reporting to be more professional than in those days, when we are told: Some years ago not more than about a fourth part of the reporters used shorthand; of late the number has increased, and now perhaps one-third of them use it. On the "Times" and "Herald" there are gentlemen who cannot write a word in shorthand, and yet they are considered the most elegant reporters in the gallery (ib. p. 208). In a still more important respect the gravamen against Athenian Sophists and modern journalists is identical. The most serious charge against the former-and it was the chief count in the indictment against Socrates himself-was that of "making the worse appear the better reason" 2 That is the commonplace charge against all advocates in the senates, the schools, the courts, and the press. "Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy is other people's doxy"; or, as a well-known and a recently deceased Oxford lecturer used to put it, "When anything unpleasant happens to a friend we call it a visitation; when it befalls an enemy we say 2 Isocrates, referring to his accuser, says (Or. xv, § 15): νῦν δὲ γέλει μὲν ὡς ἐγὼ τοὺς ἥττους λόγους κρείττους δύναμαι ποιειν. it is a judgment." Till there is a general agreement as to what is "right" and what is "wrong," or, more important still, what opinions and actions are to be excluded from both categories, it is idle to attribute dialectical defeat to the diabolical "sophistry" of the successful advocate. Upon the wider issues involved it is here unnecessary to trespass; it suffices to glance briefly at the narrower application of the charge of sophistry to political journalism; and when we talk of journalism as a curse or a blessing we all mean political journalism. Of course it is not journalism as such that is specifically arraigned, but the whole system of party government, to which system party newspapers are auxiliary. Leading articles expounding the policy of the paper are denounced as onesided and partisan. course they are, exactly to the same extent as are the speeches of most statesmen, of polemical divines, and, above all, of counsel learned in the law, in the discharge of their recognized duties as handmaids of justice. Nowhere is the case better stated than by Prof. Lawrence Lowell in his invaluable work, recently published, on "The Government of England." Of "In the English system" (he says) "the initiative in most matters of importance has come into the hands of the Cabinet Ministers as the representatives and leaders of the predominant party. It is their business to propose and it is the business of the Opposition to oppose. But the attitude of the latter is not quite spontaneous. On rare occasions it congratulates the Government upon some action which it supports heartily. More commonly it seeks to criticize everything, to find all imaginable faults. Impotent to legislate, it tries to prevent the majority from doing so; not content with expressing its views and registering a protest, it raises the same objections at every stage in the passage of a Bill, and sometimes strives to delay and even to destroy measures which it would itself enact if in power. Its immediate object is, in fact, to discredit the Cabinet. Now this sounds mischievous, and would be so were Parliament the ultimate political au-thority. But the parties are really in the position of barristers arguing a case before a jury, that jury being the national electorate; and experience has shown, contrary to the prepossessions of non-professional legal reformers in all ages, that the best method of attaining justice is to have a strong advocate argue on each side before an impartial umpire. Unfortunately the jurymen in this case are not impartial, and the arguments are largely addressed to their interests; but that is a difficulty inseparable from democracy, or indeed from any form of government" (i, 445). As Mr. Lowell truly says, "Government by party is not an ideal regimen," but at present it has no rival or alternative; and, so long as the party system prevails, its factors, good and bad, including oratory and journalism, will be obnoxious to the charges brought against the Sophists. As to the individual journalist, who is supposed to write persistently against his own convictions, we believe him to be a myth. Grant, it is true, mentions the case of a long since defunct Tory paper, of which both editor and assistant-editor, who wrote all the articles between them, were confirmed Radicals. Such cases, however, must in the nature of things be rare. It is imaginable that a capable journalist should now and again write articles in flat contradiction to his own political creed; but it is inconceivable that any man should or could habitually write good articles against his settled convictions. Writing under the conditions imposed by modern journalism, a man who persistently used arguments he held to be false would always be tripping himself up. The popular delusion arises from the fact that some journalists |