The third and greatest way in which the writer can ease the future is simply stated in the words: Fair Play. The power of the Press is a good third to the powers of Science and Finance. If the Press, as a whole, never diverged from fair report; if it refused to give unmeasured service to party or patriotic passion; if it played the game as Sport plays it—what a clearance of the air! At present, with, of course, many and distinguished exceptions, the Press in every country plays the game according to rules of its own which have too little acquaintance with those of sport.
The Press is manned by a great crew of writers, the vast majority of whom have in private life a higher standard of fair play than that followed by the Press ship they man. They would, I believe, be the first to confess that. Improvement in Press standards of international and political fair play can only come from the individual writers who make up the Press. And such reform will not come until editors and journalists acquire the habit of exchanging thought internationally, of broadening their minds and hearts with other points of view, of recognising that they must treat as they would themselves be treated. Only, in short, when they do as they would, most of them, individually choose to do, will a sort of word-miasma cease to breed international agues and fever. We do not commonly hold, in private life, that ends justify means. Why should they be held to justify means in Press life—why should report so often be accepted without due examination when it is favourable to one’s views; rejected without due examination when it is unfavourable; why should the other side’s view so often be burked; and so on, and so on? The Press has great power and professes high ideals; it has much virtue; it does great service; but it does greater harm when, for whatever reason, it diverges from truth, or from the principles of fair play.
To sum up, Governments and Peoples are no longer in charge. Our fate is really in the hands of the three great Powers—Science, Finance and the Press. Underneath the showy political surface of things, those three great Powers are secretly determining the march of the nations; and there is little hope for the future unless they can mellow and develop on international lines. In each of these departments of life there must be men who feel this, as strongly as the writer of these words. The world’s hope lies with them; in the possibility of their being able to institute a sort of craftsman’s trusteeship for mankind—a new triple alliance, of Science, Finance and the Press, in service to a new idealism. Nations, in block, will never join hands, never have much in common, never be able to see each others’ points of view. The outstanding craftsmen of the nations have a far better chance of seeing eye to eye; they have the common ground of their craft, and a livelier vision. What divides them at present is a too narrow sense of patriotism, and—to speak crudely—money. Inventors must exist; financiers live; and papers pay. And, here, Irony smiles. Though Science, Finance and the Press at present seem to doubt it, there is, still, more money to be made out of the salvation of mankind than out of its destruction; a better and a more enduring livelihood for these three Estates. And yet without the free exchange of international thought, we may be fairly certain that the present purely national basis of their livelihoods will persist, and if it does the human race will not, or at least so meagrely that it will be true to say of it, as of Anatole France’s old woman: ‘It lives but so little!’
Printed by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., Cambridge, England.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.