he highest
ability in every country of Europe; and a Socialist Press began to
arise, which was everywhere free, and soon in active opposition to the
Official Press. Again (of a religious temper in their segregation,
conviction and enthusiasm) there began to appear (when the oppressor
was mild), the small papers defending the rights of oppressed
nationalities.

Religion, then, and cognate enthusiasms were the first breeders of the
Free Press.

It is exceedingly important to recognize this, because it has stamped
the whole movement with a particular character to which I shall later
refer when I come to its disabilities.

The motive of Propaganda, I repeat, was not at first conscious of
anything iniquitous in the great Press or Official Press side by side
with which it existed. Veuillot, in founding his splendidly fighting
newspaper, which had so prodigious an effect in France, felt no
particular animosity against the "Debats," for instance; his
particular Catholic enthusiasm recognized itself as exceptional, and
was content to accept the humble or, at any rate, inferior position,
which admitted eccentricity connotes. "Later," these founders of the
Free Press seemed to say, "we may convert the mass to our views, but,
for the moment, we are admittedly a clique: an exceptional body with
the penalties attaching to such." They said this although the whole
life of France is at least as Catholic as the life of Great Britain is
Plutocratic, or the life of Switzerland Democratic. And they said it
because they arose _after_ the Capitalist press (neutral in religion
as in every vital thing) had captured the whole field.

The first Propagandists, then, did not stand up to the Official Press
as equals. They crept in as inferiors, or rather as open ex-centrics.
For Victorian England and Third Empire France falsely proclaimed the
"representative" quality of the Official Press.

To the honour of the Socialist movement the Socialist Free Press was
the first to stand up as an equal against the giants.

I remember how in my boyhood I was shocked and a little dazed to see
references in Socialist sheets such as "Justice" to papers like the
"Daily Telegraph," or the "Times," with the epithet "Capitalist" put
after them in brackets. I thought, then, it was the giving of an
abnormal epithet to a normal thing; but I now know that these small
Socialist free papers were talking the plainest common sense when they
specifically emphasized as