I was cut
short, I will not say by the law of space, but rather by my own
lawlessness in the matter of space. In any case, there is something more
that ought to be said.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I hope some day to see an
anonymous article counted as dishonourable as an anonymous letter. For
some time to come, the idea of the leading article, expressing the
policy of the whole paper, must necessarily remain legitimate; at any
rate, we have all written such leading articles, and should never think
the worse of any one for writing one. But I should certainly say that
writing anonymously ought to have some definite excuse, such as that of
the leading article. Writing anonymously ought to be the exception;
writing a signed article ought to be the rule. And anonymity ought to be
not only an exception, but an accidental exception; a man ought always
to be ready to say what anonymous article he had written. The
journalistic habit of counting it something sacred to keep secret the
origin of an article is simply part of the conspiracy which seeks to put
us who are journalists in the position of a much worse sort of Jesuits
or Freemasons.

As has often been said, anonymity would be all very well if one could
for a moment imagine that it was established from good motives. Suppose,
for instance, that we were all quite certain that the men on the
_Thunderer_ newspaper were a band of brave young idealists who were so
eager to overthrow Socialism, Municipal and National, that they did not
care to which of them especially was given the glory of striking it
down. Unfortunately, however, we do not believe this. What we believe,
or, rather, what we know, is that the attack on Socialism in the
_Thunderer_ arises from a chaos of inconsistent and mostly evil motives,
any one of which would lose simply by being named. A jerry-builder
whose houses have been condemned writes anonymously and becomes the
_Thunderer_. A Socialist who has quarrelled with the other Socialists
writes anonymously, and he becomes the _Thunderer_. A monopolist who has
lost his monopoly, and a demagogue who has lost his mob, can both write
anonymously and become the same newspaper. It is quite true that there
is a young and beautiful fanaticism in which men do not care to reveal
their names. But there is a more elderly and a much more common
excitement in which men do not dare to reveal them.

Then there is another rule for making journalism honest on