It was, of course, only a few Bohemian souls who were carried away by the excitement of that baptismal night. Generally speaking, the staff of The Tribune was made up of men of high and serious character, whose chief fault, indeed, was to err rather much on the side of abstract idealism and the gravity of philosophical faith.
We produced a paper which was almost too good for a public educated in the new journalism of the Harmsworth school, with its daily sensations, its snippety articles, its “stunt” stories. We were long, and serious, and “high-brow,” and—to tell the truth—dull. The public utterly refused to buy The Tribune. Nothing that we could do would tempt them to buy it. As literary editor of special articles and stories, I bought some of the most brilliant work of the best writers in England. I published one of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories—a gem—but it did not increase the circulation of The Tribune by a single copy. I published five chapters of autobiography by Joseph Conrad—a literary masterpiece—but it did not move the sales. I persuaded G. K. Chesterton to contribute a regular article; I published the work of many great novelists, and encouraged the talent of the younger school; but entirely without success. It was desperately disappointing, and I am convinced that the main cause of our failure was the surfeit of reading matter we gave each day to a public which had no leisure for such a mass of print, however good its quality. The appearance of the paper, owing to the lack of advertisements, was heavy and dull, and any bright and light little articles were overshadowed among the long, bleak columns.
A new editor, belonging to the Harmsworth school, a charming little man named S. G. Pryor, succeeded William Hill, but his attempts to convert The Tribune into a kind of Daily Mail offended our small clientele of serious readers, without attracting the great public.
After two years of disastrous failure, Franklin Thomasson, who by that time had lost something like £300,000, decided to cut his losses, and the news leaked out among his staff of over eight hundred men that the ship was sinking. It was a real tragedy for those men who had left good jobs to join The Tribune, and who saw themselves faced with unemployment, and even ruin and starvation for their wives and families. Some of us made desperate endeavors to postpone the sentence of death by introducing new capital.
One of my colleagues journeyed to Dublin in the hope of persuading Augustine Birrell to obtain government support for this Liberal organ.
He sent a somewhat startling telegram to Birrell at Dublin Castle.
“The lives of eight hundred men with their wives and children depend on the interview which I beg you to grant me to-day.”
Birrell was surprised, and granted the interview.
“Mr. Birrell,” said my grave and melancholy friend, placing a hat of high and noble architecture on the great man’s desk, “is The Tribune going to die?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Birrell, twinkling through his eyeglasses, “may The Tribune die that death it so richly deserves.”