Men found that the great papers (in their final phase) refused to talk
about anything really important in Religion. They dared do nothing but
repeat very discreetly the vaguest ethical platitudes. They hardly
dared do even that. They took for granted a sort of invertebrate
common opinion. They consented to be slightly coloured by the
dominating religion of the country in which each paper happened to be
printed--and there was an end of it.

Great bodies of men who cared intensely for a definite creed found
that expression for it was lacking, even if this creed (as in France)
were that of a very large majority in the State. The "organs of
opinion" professed a genteel ignorance of that idea which was most
widespread, most intense, and most formative. Nor could it be
otherwise with a Capitalist enterprise whose directing motive was not
conversion or even expression, but mere gain. There was nothing to
distinguish a large daily paper owned by a Jew from one owned by an
Agnostic or a Catholic. Necessity of expression compelled the creation
of a Free Press in connection with this one motive of religion.

Men came across very little of this in England, because England was
for long virtually homogeneous in religion, and that religion was not
enthusiastic during the years in which the Free Press arose. But such
a Free Press in defence of religion (the pioneer of all the Free
Press) arose in Ireland and in France and elsewhere. It had at first
no quarrel with the big official Capitalist Press. It took for granted
the anodyne and meaningless remarks on Religion which appeared in the
sawdust in the Official Press, but it asserted the necessity of
specially emphasizing its particular point of view in its own columns:
for religion affects all life.

This same motive of Propaganda later launched other papers in defence
of enthusiasms other than strictly religious enthusiasms, and the most
important of these was the enthusiasm for Collectivism--Socialism.

A generation ago and more, great numbers of men were persuaded that a
solution for the whole complex of social injustice was to be found in
what they called "nationalizing the means of production, distribution,
and exchange." That is, of course, in plain English, putting land,
houses, and machinery, and stores of food and clothing into the hands
of the politicians for control in use and for distribution in
consumption.

This creed was held with passionate conviction by men of t