JOURNALISTIC ENTERPRISE.
Once upon a time a rash man, wishing who knows for what?—possibly a peerage, possibly to be relieved of superfluous cash and so no longer have to pay super-tax, possibly for the mere joy of pulling wires—decided to start a newspaper.
After much consultation the plans were complete in every particular save one. The premises were taken, the staff appointed, the paper, ink and so forth contracted for, the office girls and lift girls were engaged, the usual gifted and briefless barrister was installed as editor, and the necessary Cabinet Minister willing to reveal secrets was obtained. Everything, in short, that a successful newspaper at the present time could possibly require was ready, when it was suddenly remembered that no provision had been made for a daily supply of pictures. A popular paper without pictures being such a crazy anomaly, a pictorial editor was instantly advertised for.
"Well," said the editor to the applicant for the post, "give me an idea of your originality and resource in the choice of topical photographs."
"I think you can rely on me to be original," said the young man, "and not only original but revolutionary. I have thought about it all a lot, and I have made some discoveries. My notion is that the public wants to be 'in' all that is happening. Nothing's beneath their notice; their eyes want food to feast on all the time."
"Go on," said the editor; "you interest me strangely."
"The function of the camera, as I conceive it," the young man explained, "is to serve as the handmaid of the fountain-pen. Together they are terrific—a combination beyond resistance. That perhaps is the chief of the inspirations which much pondering has brought me. One must always be fortifying the other. People not only want to read of a thing, they come to see it, and very rightly. Here is an example. We are gradually getting shorter and shorter of messengers, so much so that many shopkeepers no longer are able to send purchases home. That means that people must carry them themselves. Now what more interesting, valuable or timely picture could you have than a photograph of a customer carrying, say, a loaf of bread—a picture of the unfortunate victim of the Kaiser in the very act of having to do something for himself? How that brings it home to us!"
"By Jove, yes," said the editor, deeply impressed.
"I could arrange for someone to be taken just leaving the shop," the applicant went on; "and I would put underneath something about the straits to which the War has brought shoppers."
"Capital!" said the editor. "Go on."
"Then I have noticed," said the youth, "that people are interested in photographs of musical-comedy and revue actresses."
"I believe you may be right," the editor remarked pensively.
"So I would arrange for a steady series of these ladies, which not only would delight the public but might be profitable to the advertisement revenue of the paper if properly managed; for I should state what plays they were in, and where."
"A great idea," said the editor.
"But I should not," the young man continued, "merely give that information beneath. I should add something topical, such as 'who has just received an admiring letter from a stranger at the Front'; 'who spends her spare time knitting for our brave lads'; 'whose latest song is whistled in trench and camp'; 'who confesses to a great admiration for Khaki,' and so on. In this way you get a War interest, and every one is the better for looking at some pictures. Nothing is so elevating as the constant spectacle of young women with insufficient noses."
"Marvellous!" exclaimed the editor. "But what of the War itself?"
"Ah, yes, I was coming to that," the young man went on. "I have a strong conviction—I may be wrong, but I think not—that war-pictures are popular, and I have noticed that one soldier astonishingly resembles another. This is a priceless discovery, as I will show. I would therefore get all the groups of soldiers that I could take in open country wherever it was most convenient to my operator, and I would label them according to recent events. For example, I would call one group—and understand that they would all have non-committal backgrounds—'A wayside chat near Salonica'; another, 'A Tommy narrating the story of his escape from a Jack Johnson'; a third, 'A hurried lunch somewhere in France'; a fourth, 'How the new group of Lord Derby's men will look after a few weeks'; a fifth, 'Our brave lads leaving Flanders on short leave'; and so on."
"But you are a genius!" exclaimed the editor, surprised into enthusiasm.
"As for the rest of the pictures," said the applicant, "I have perhaps peculiar views, but I hold that they ought to be photographs of Members of Parliament walking to or from the House of Commons, a profoundly interesting phase of modern life too little touched upon; photographs of the fiancées of soldiers, of whom it does not matter if no one had ever heard before, engagements being of the highest importance, especially at a time when marriage is a state duty. So much for the staple of the picture-page, which I trust you do not consider too daring."
"Daring, perhaps," said the editor, "but not excessively so, and one must be both nowadays. One must innovate."
"And then," pursued the youth, "for padding—though padding of course only to the experts, not to the great hungry asinine public—anything can be rendered serviceable provided that the words beneath are adroit enough. Thus, a view of Westminster Abbey would be 'The architectural jewel of England which the Zeppelins have in vain tried to bomb'; a view of Victoria Station, 'The terminus at which every day and night, thousands of homing Tommies are welcomed'; any picture of a dog or cat or canary or parrot would bear a legend to the effect that all our brave lads love pets and are never so happy as when accompanied by a favourite animal; while any maritime scene would be certainly related to a recent submarine outrage, the Almighty in His infinite wisdom and prevision having made all expanses of ocean look alike."
"You are certainly," said the editor, "a very original and enterprising young man and I have great pleasure in engaging you to enrich our sheet."
But when the paper came out the picture page was found to differ in no single respect from the other picture pages in the other dailies.