rily an unpopular voice with the mass of
readers, or, if it was not unpopular, that was only because it was
negligible.

This first disability, however, under which the Free Press suffered,
and still suffers, would not naturally have been of long duration. The
remaining three were far graver. For the mere inertia or counter
current against which any reformer struggles is soon turned if the
reformer (as was the case here) represented a real reaction, and was
doing or saying things which the people, had they been as well
informed as himself, would have agreed with. With the further
disabilities of (2) particularism, (3) poverty, (4) insufficiency (to
which I add, in this country, restraint by the political lawyers), it
was otherwise.

2

The Particularism of the Free Papers was a grave and permanent
weakness which still endures. Any instructed man to-day who really
wants to find out what is going on reads the Free Press; but he is
compelled, as I have said, to read the whole of it and piece together
the sections if he wishes to discover his true whereabouts. Each
particular organ gives him an individual impression, which is
ex-centric, often highly ex-centric, to the general impression.

When I want to know, for instance, what is happening in France, I read
the Jewish Socialist paper, the "Humanite"; the most violent French
Revolutionary papers I can get, such as "La Guerre Sociale"; the
Royalist "Action Francaise"; the anti-Semitic "Libre Parole," and so
forth.

If I want to find out what is really happening with regard to
Ireland, I not only buy the various small Irish free papers (and they
are numerous), but also "The New Age" and the "New Witness": and so
on, all through the questions that are of real and vital interest. But
I only get my picture as a composite. The very same truth will be
emphasized by different Free Papers for totally different motives.

Take the Marconi case. The big official papers first boycotted it for
months, and then told a pack of silly lies in support of the
politicians. The Free Press gave one the truth but its various organs
gave the truth for very different reasons and with very different
impressions. To some of the Irish papers Marconi was a comic episode,
"just what one expects of Westminster"; others dreaded it for fear it
should lower the value of the Irish-owned Marconi shares. "The New
Age" looked at it from quite another point of view than that of the
"New Witness," and