t such Liberalism was in
no way whatever on the side of Labour; on the contrary, it was on the
side of the Labour Party. . . .

Both Chesterton and Belloc had begun to point out that a Free Press
had almost disappeared from England. The revenue of most of the
newspapers depended not on subscriptions but on advertisement.
Therefore nothing could be said in them which was displeasing to
their wealthy advertisers. Nor was this the worst of it. Very rich
men were often owners of half a dozen papers or more and dictated
their policy. An outstanding example was Alfred Harmsworth--Lord
Northcliffe--whose newspapers ranged from the _Times_ through the
_Daily Mail_ to _Answers_. Thus to every section of the English
people, Harmsworth was able to convey day by day such news as he
thought best together with his own outlook and philosophy of life
such as it was. Still worse, the _Times_ had not lost in the eyes of
Europe, to say nothing of America, that reputation it had held so
long of being _the_ official expression of English opinion. It was
still the _Jupiter_ of Trollope's day, the maker of ministries or
their undoing. In the days of a Free Press a paper held such a
position in virtue of the talents of its staff. Editors were then
powerful individuals and would brook little interference. But today
the editor was commonly only the mouthpiece of the owner.

It is surprising that Gilbert and the official Liberal Press so long
tolerated one another. The _Daily News_ and other papers owned by Mr.
Cadbury (of Cadbury's Cocoa) were often referred to as "the Cocoa
Press" and it happened that it was not in the end political
disagreement alone that brought the Chesterton-Cadbury alliance to an
end. In one of Gilbert's poems in praise of wine are the lines:

Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast.

In the _Autobiography_ he tells us that after he had published the
poem he felt he could write no longer for the _Daily News_. He went
from the _Daily News_ to the _Daily Herald_, to the Editor of which
he wrote that the _News_ "had come to stand for almost everything I
disagree with; and I thought I had better resign before the next
great measure of social reform made it illegal to go on strike." G.K.
was a considerable asset to any paper and had recently been referred
to by Shaw (in a debate with Belloc) as "a flourishing property of
Mr. Cadbury's."

Politically the break was bound to come, for even when _Dicke