fficult to speak as of individuals.
They are referred to more properly as the _New Age_, the _New Witness_,
and the _New Statesman_, and their respective personalities and
attitudes of mind are fitly expressed in the names of the organs through
which they speak. All three agree in finding the times out of joint and
desiring new and better conditions of life: they differ in the
standpoints from which they approach an analysis of present conditions
and in the solutions they propound. The _New Age_ is the most valuable
because it is the most thorough. Not only is its analysis of present
conditions the most acute and the most sound that we have to-day, but
the solutions it propounds to the problems it analyses are the most
fearless, the most thorough and the most idealistic. The _New Witness_
is equally thorough but more immediate. The scope of its analysis is not
so wide. Although its views are based on principles similar to those of
the _New Age_, it is concerned more to influence the actions than the
thoughts of men. Its object is to bear testimony to the wrongs that are
being done to-day, the crimes that are committed every day against the
welfare of the community, and to cry aloud for the immediate righting of
those wrongs, the stern punishment of those crimes. Though these two
journals are aiming at the same object, the methods they adopt are in
almost direct contrast. Mr. Orage looks down from the height, not of
philosophic doubt, but of philosophic certainty (where he alone feels
happy) upon the petty house of party politics, and seeks, by the magic
music of his words and phrases, so to move and draw after him the sand
of human nature on which that house is built, that it may no longer
stand but fall and be banished utterly. Mr. Cecil Chesterton, on the
other hand, only happy in the role of the new David, gives fearless
battle to the modern Goliath, caring no whit if at times the struggle go
against him and he find himself hard pressed at the Old Bailey, but
gleefully and dauntlessly springing at his monstrous assailant, in the
hope that some day a lucky stone from his sling will find its mark.
Somewhere between these two extremes stands (or wavers) the _New
Statesman_, sometimes inclining more to the one, more to the other
method. It is concerned neither entirely with the thoughts nor entirely
with the actions of men, but with each in part. Its object is so to
influence the thoughts of men that they will find natural