. But the modern editor
regards himself far too much as a kind of original artist, who can
select and suppress facts with the arbitrary ease of a poet or a
caricaturist. He "makes up" the paper as man "makes up" a fairy tale, he
considers his newspaper solely as a work of art, meant to give pleasure,
not to give news. He puts in this one letter because he thinks it
clever. He puts in these three or four letters because he thinks them
silly. He suppresses this article because he thinks it wrong. He
suppresses this other and more dangerous article because he thinks it
right. The old idea that he is simply a mode of the expression of the
public, an "organ" of opinion, seems to have entirely vanished from his
mind. To-day the editor is not only the organ, but the man who plays on
the organ. For in all our modern movements we move away from Democracy.

This is the whole danger of our time. There is a difference between the
oppression which has been too common in the past and the oppression
which seems only too probable in the future. Oppression in the past, has
commonly been an individual matter. The oppressors were as simple as the
oppressed, and as lonely. The aristocrat sometimes hated his inferiors;
he always hated his equals. The plutocrat was an individualist. But in
our time even the plutocrat has become a Socialist. They have science
and combination, and may easily inaugurate a much greater tyranny than
the world has ever seen.

ON THE CRYPTIC AND THE ELLIPTIC

Surely the art of reporting speeches is in a strange state of
degeneration. We should not object, perhaps, to the reporter's making
the speeches much shorter than they are; but we do object to his making
all the speeches much worse than they are. And the method which he
employs is one which is dangerously unjust. When a statesman or
philosopher makes an important speech, there are several courses which
the reporter might take without being unreasonable. Perhaps the most
reasonable course of all would be not to report the speech at all. Let
the world live and love, marry and give in marriage, without that
particular speech, as they did (in some desperate way) in the days when
there were no newspapers. A second course would be to report a small
part of it; but to get that right. A third course, far better if you can
do it, is to understand the main purpose and argument of the speech, and
report that in clear and logical language of your own. In short,