1214]. One
element in the influence of the _Times_ was its _seeming_ impartiality
accompanied by a pretentious assertion of superior information and
wisdom that at times irritated its contemporaries, but was recognized as
making this journal the most powerful agent in England. Angry at a
_Times_ editorial in February, 1863, in which Mason had been berated for
a speech made at the Lord Mayor's banquet, _The Index_ declared:

"Our contemporary is all things to all men. It not only
shouts with the largest crowd, according to the Pickwickian
philosophy, but with a skill and daring that command
admiration, it shouts simultaneously with opposite and
contending crowds. It is everybody's _Times_[1215]."

Yet _The Index_ knew, and frequently so stated, that the _Times_ was at
bottom pro-Southern. John Bright's medium, the _Morning Star_, said:
"There was something bordering on the sublime in the tremendous audacity
of the war news supplied by the _Times_. Of course, its prophecies were
in a similar style. None of your doubtful oracles there; none of your
double-meaning vaticinations, like that which took poor Pyrrhus
in[1216]." In short, the _Times_ became for the last year of the war the
Bible of their faith to Southern sympathizers, and was frequent in its
preachments[1217].

There was one journal in London which claimed to have equal if not
greater knowledge and authority in military matters. This was the weekly
_Army and Navy Gazette_, and its editor, W.H. Russell, in 1861 war
correspondent in America of the _Times_, but recalled shortly after his
famous letter on the battle of Bull Run, consistently maintained after
the war had ended that he had always asserted the ultimate victory of
the North and was, indeed, so pro-Northern in sentiment that this was
the real cause of his recall[1218]. He even claimed to have believed in
Northern victory to the extent of re-union. These protestations after
the event are not borne out by the columns of the _Gazette_, for that
journal was not far behind the _Times_ in its delineation of incidents
unfavourable to the North and in its all-wise prophecies of Northern
disaster. The _Gazette_ had no wide circulation except among those in
the service, but its _dicta_, owing to the established reputation of
Russell and to the specialist nature of the paper, were naturally quite
readily accepted and repeated in the ordinary press. Based on a correct
appreciation of man