April 10.
British institutions are often credited with more stability than they deserve. Just now the party' system as a pivotal factor in Parliamentary government is in suspended animation. The threatened House of Lords lives long; its enemies can do little to expedite its decease, except by the negative device of refusing to allow it to reform itself. The Press, as the) Fourth Estate, has lost its bearings. In some countries it has been virtually abolished. The fact that, in Great Britain it has escaped that supreme testimony to its power has obscured the significance of the changes wrought by megaphonic press lords mass circulations. The British Government of the day can no longer depend automatically on the support of what is known as the popular press. That is not entirely due to the abrogation of the party system. It comes from the new journalistic technique which, seeking to apotheosize the wisdom of the proletariat, concentrates the pitiless fire of " uninformed—voluntarily uninformed—criticism on the body of men expressly elected by the people to rule—and be cursed. There are corrective influences.
There are in London and the Provinces responsible dailies which abide by the canons of sane editorship. A strong periodical press—forced though it be to admit to its company the frank irrelevances of the crank and the propagandist—is able to instruct and give discriminating support to recognized authority. The broadcast studio, preserving an independence allied with a sense of responsibility and, yet, a marked receptiveness to Public opinion, is free from the crudities of the popular newspaper and from the impertinences. of the dictators. It may be argued that, on these lines, the requirements of an intelligent nation are not badly served. Yet while the freedom of the Press is perhaps more securely established in Great Britain than elsewhere, it would be foolish to ignore current tendences which, however attributable in the main
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.