king them
large and live. It secures this through the newspaper, the print of the
present, which sets at one in consciousness vast masses of men which are
set apart in space. For generations separated in time, the library, the
print of the past, preserves for society the sacred oracles of memory.
Misunderstood, misappreciated, placed in opposition, treated as
antagonists, the editor assuring us that the newspaper has superseded
the printed book, the librarian hesitating to cumber his shelves with
the fugitive issues of the newspaper, these twin and vital organs in
society still supplement and correlate each other.

The newspaper is the library of the moment, the library is the newspaper
of all time. We open a newspaper to learn what we are as a nation. We
enter a library to learn what we were. The revelations of neither are
altogether satisfactory. We object to the library because it does not
tell enough of the past. Too often we object to the newspaper because it
tells too much of the present. The faults and shortcomings of the past,
however plainly told, rouse no unpleasant sense of responsibility. In
our own individual experience we have each of us had our private and
personal quarrel with consciousness and memory for setting in too clear
a light the sins and duties, the lacks and demands of the past and
passing day. The revelation is no pleasanter when consciousness, memory
and responsibility are social and national. Yet it is only by accepting
both a complete social consciousness and a complete social memory that a
society can be created whose ultimate end is the highest development of
each of its individuals, whose service is the highest duty of all its
members. Lavish margin of error in the newspaper too often leads us by
some slain truth to ask with the soldier at Philippi:

"Messenger of error--
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things they are not?--"

But like Cassius, the truth is self-slain and dies among its friends.
It still remains true that the newspaper is oftener challenged for
telling what is unpleasant than for recording what is untrue, and the
refined and cultured soul, which objects to the newspaper because it
reeks with the ill news of society for whose ills no man can avoid his
just share of responsibility, but imitate the Pharaoh, who slew the
messengers of evil and sunk in wilful ignorance to an ignoble grave.

The nation which lives by the newspaper will lose