Spender, Editor of the for Gazette," writing on the "art and craft of the leader writer," in the "Newspaper World," says: "The public is totally ignorant of the names of men who have worked for them on the great London dailies for 50 years consecutively, men of great capacity and knowledge who have given to public offal more concentrated study than nine-tenths of the politicians who are known to the public, and who, if the truth were known, have influenced public affairs more steadily and consistently than all but a few of the most eminent leaders and statesmen. These men have no complaint to make of the conditions under which they work, and I hope they will find successors who will take the same modest and disinterested view of their duty. Bue the conditions must be understood, and especially by those who aspire to become leader writers. It is from the beginning laid down that they shall not air themselves in public, and that they shall write in a form which is peculiarly artificial and difficult to handle and peculiarly liable to absurdity unless dis-erectly employed.
Tue Eprronia. "We."
"That form results from the use of the first person plural instead of the first person singular—the we' instead of the 'I.' There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the we It is popularly supposed io be a pompous assumption invented by newspapers for their own greater glory. It is, believe me, the only condition on which the leading article could be continued at all in a country like ours, or, at all events, the only condition in which the leader-writer could continue writing it for more than a very brief period.
"If I, for instance, had started writing my articles in the 'Westminister' in the first person, and signed them with my own name, I should not have survived for years; I should have been hissed off the scene at the end of one year, perhaps even of six months, "People would have said. Who is this pretentious bore who lays down the law to us day after day?" Even the most eminent public man has to be sparing of his apbearances, lest the public tire of him, and in countries where journalists sign their articles and write: in the first person, they generally find it necessary to adopt pseudonyms and to vary them pretty frequently.
"The use of the first personal pronoun implies an attitude and an assumption which the public will not tolerate for long, except in a major prophet. and does in fact make all the difference to the tone and manner in which the writer approaches his readers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.