such an organ it will
be very strongly coloured with the opinion, or even fanaticism, of
some minority. The Free Press, as a whole, if you add it all up and
cancel out one exaggerated statement against another, does give you a
true view of the state of society in which you live. The Official
Press to-day gives you an absurdly false one everywhere. What a
caricature--and what a base, empty caricature--of England or France or
Italy you get in the "Times," or the "Manchester Guardian," the
"Matin," or the "Tribune"! No one of them is in any sense general--or
really national.

The Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections,
for it is _disparate_ and it is _particularist_: it is marked with
isolation--and it is so marked because its origin lay in various and
most diverse _propaganda_: because it came later than the official
Press of Capitalism, and was, in its origins, but a reaction against
it.

B

The second motive, that of indignation against _falsehood_, came to
work much later than the motive of propaganda.

Men gradually came to notice that one thing after another of great
public interest, sometimes of vital public interest, was deliberately
suppressed in the principal great official papers, and that positive
falsehoods were increasingly suggested, or stated.

There was more than this. For long the _owner_ of a newspaper had for
the most part been content to regard it as a revenue-producing thing.
The _editor_ was supreme in matters of culture and opinion. True, the
editor, being revocable and poor, could not pretend to full political
power. But it was a sort of dual arrangement which yet modified the
power of the vulgar owner.

I myself remember that state of affairs: the editor who was a
gentleman and dined out, the proprietor who was a lord and nervous
when he met a gentleman. It changed in the nineties of the last
century or the late eighties. It had disappeared by the 1900's.

The editor became (and now is) a mere mouthpiece of the proprietor.
Editors succeed each other rapidly. Of great papers to-day the
editor's name of the moment is hardly known--but not a Cabinet
Minister that could not pass an examination in the life, vices,
vulnerability, fortune, investments and favours of the owner. The
change was rapidly admitted. It came quickly but thoroughly. At
last--like most rapid developments--it exceeded itself.

Men owning the chief newspapers could be heard boasting of their po