On the ethics of newspaper proprietorship he thinks that it makes for soundness that newspaper proprietors should be pecuniarily independent. It is also most important that they should be men whose money is derived from their newspapers, and not from other sources. A great newspaper in the hands of a man who does not look to it for profit, but owns it for external reasons, is a source of danger. In view of this opinion, it is interesting to recall that the control of the greatest newspaper in the world has recently passed, in great part, into the hands of a man who possesses a considerable portion of one of America's greatest fortunes.
The chapters of Mr. Strachey's book which should have been most interesting are those entitled “Five Great Men,” in which he discusses Lord Cromer, John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Cecil Rhodes, and Joseph Chamberlain. Many will find them the most disappointing, particularly those who knew in the flesh any of these great men. They would be less disappointing, perhaps, if they were not so palpably self-laudatory. Mr. Strachey had a profound admiration for Lord Cromer and he shared it with thousands of his countrymen and Egyptian well-wishers the world over. Recalling a visit to Lord Cromer in Cairo, he says:
“Inexperienced as I then was in public affairs, it was a matter of no small pleasure and of no small amount of pride to find my own special opinions, views, and theories as to political action plainly endorsed by an authority so great. In not a single case was I disappointed or disillusioned either with what had been my own views or with what were Lord Cromer's.”
This reminds strangely of Mr. Strachey's opinion of the Dons in his youthful days at Oxford. Future biographers of Lord Cromer will have to note the fact that “he was, with the single exception of my cousin, Lytton Strachey, the most competent reviewer I ever had,” and that “he wrote a review every week for The Spectator on some important book,” also that “he took an immense amount of trouble to realise and understand The Spectator view, and to commit me to nothing which he thought I might dislike.”
In the same way, Mr. Strachey tells with great relish how he won the approval of Roosevelt with his tact and discretion when the President invited him to be present at one of his Cabinet meetings, and of Roosevelt's admiration when Mr. Strachey went with him in floods of rain for a ride on a dark November evening. In curious contrast to his statement that on this occasion he was mounted on a superb Kentucky horse procured from the cavalry barracks, “a creature whose strength and speed proved how well deserved is the reputation of that famous breed,” is the photograph of Mr. Strachey on his pony at the end of the chapter, from which one would not readily gather that he had been selected by Mr. Roosevelt to accompany him “on these afternoon winter rides” as a test of men.
Mr. Strachey says that the bed-rock of his political opinions is a whole-hearted belief in the principles of democracy, and he defines his conception of democracy as being
“not devotion to certain abstract principles or views of communal life which have the label 'democratic' placed upon them, but a belief in the justice, convenience and necessity of ascertaining and abiding by the lawfully and constitutionally expressed Will of the Majority of the People.”
He states his belief in the referendum
“in order to free us from the evils of log-rolling and other exigencies of the kind which Walt Whitman grouped under the general formula of 'the insolence of elected persons.'”
He admits, however, that a whole-hearted belief in the democratic principles need not prevent one from having strong views on special points of policy, and one of his special points of policy is in regard to Ireland.