intellectual attraction. Under chiefs like Delane, Mudford, Lord Burnham, and Lord Glenesk he was only in favour, but to a great extent his own master as well. Experience had taught him the line to take, and he instinctively subordinated, if necessary, his own views on matters of detail to the policy of the paper, but he never had occasion to write against his own convictions. Practically he had a free hand. So long as he made his points and put them effectively, he seldom failed to please those who retained his services and the public who profited by them.

For the journalist of this sort there is little place in the twentieth-century press. Contrast the relations too often at present subsisting with the reciprocal loyalty and mutual goodwill animating, in an earlier régime, employer and employed.

Of those qualities I may mention two characteristic illustrations. The earlier belongs to the period of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty (1860). One day the 'Times' came out with a leader announcing that Prussia had at last consented to join the Zollverein of the German States. Cobden seems to have been the first English reader who recalled and properly drew attention to the fact that the Zollverein had been in existence already for a whole generation, and had, in fact, been created by Prussia herself. The responsibility for the astounding blunder rested, of course, with the editor; whatever the hand which actually committed it, Delane took care that it should be associated with no other name than his own. Many years later, in 1875, at the time of the Franco-German scare, diplomatically known as the 'seize Mai,' Delane went to Paris to find out, with Blowitz' help, the truth of the matter. He satisfied himself that Bismarck did not nourish the warlike intentions attributed to him. He informed one of his leader-writers, James Macdonell, of this discovery, but did not suggest an article about it. Macdonell, however, wrote a leader which, when it appeared, gave an impression of being an undignified appeal to Bismarck, implying that he was the arbiter of the peace of Europe. Delane, though the article was not submitted to him-he was in fact out of town at the time— took the whole blame upon himself. That he considered the duty of one who, to use a favourite expression of

the editors of that epoch, was within the 'comity of journalism.'

Originality and courage in enterprise, lavishness in expenditure, and a shrewd conception of what the public wants-all this the modern newspaper 'boss' undoubtedly possesses. He has his reward in a circulation counted by millions, and an influence making him at once the 'ductor dubitantium' and 'arbiter elegantiarum' of the lower middle class. The 'Times' at the zenith of its high-priced omnipotence never spoke with such minutely far-reaching authority as belongs to the modern press. For every suburban gentleman or rural squire who echoed with verbal fidelity the pronouncements on statesmanship, foreign or domestic, on social economy and finance, of the sixpenny or even threepenny Times,' there are to-day whole families innumerable owing all that they think, believe, or say about the topics of the time to the leaderettes and paragraphs with which the halfpenny sheet abounds, or to the communiqué on naval architecture, the cause and cure of our military blunders, the whole duty of cabinets, and the unknown art of discovering the indispensable man, not by any means always written by an expert in any of these departments.

'Three or even four single gentlemen rolled into one,' might be Mrs Malaprop's description of the Fleet Street magnate à la mode. It is the same voice which speaks from different platforms and through various trumpets, but always more or less to the same effect. Thus what is sometimes called the significant unanimity of the English press may mean not so much that several journalistic minds think alike, as that one and the same dictator permeates the whole acreage of typography with his own notions. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.' The disestablishment and disendowment of the nineteenth-century 'staff' has opened the door to a large number of intelligent youths whose parents had long been vexed with the standing question what to do with our boys.' Facility and accuracy in précis-writing can be soon acquired by a sharp lad, and can always be turned to paying account in the newspaper office for the production of literary 'pemmican.' Whether in paragraph-making or in political or military correspondence from foreign parts, the new journalism

affords much more opportunity and encouragement to original talent than was offered by the old. The newspaper used to be a close borough; to-day it has become an open market for every saleable ware; while the verdict, popular and professional, seems to be that all is for the best in this best of newspaper worlds.

That does not compensate the average newspaper reader, at his breakfast-table, in his office, or in the rural snuggery, decorated with guns, fishing-rods, and pipe-racks, that he calls his study, for the profound modifications which have taken place in an institution which was to him, as it had been to his forefathers, all that Greeks and Persians once found in the Delphic oracle. Delane's consummate knowledge of human nature, Continental as well as English, his intellectual force, his detestation of everything comprehensively denounced by him as 'plunging,' operated as a steadying not less than an instructing influence at all seasons of national anxiety or peril. His immediate successor, Thomas Chenery, long trained in the Delanian methods, not only carried on the great tradition by combining in his articles caution with authority, but invested the paper with a new attraction in the shape of an almost daily lighter article to relieve the severity of political discussion.

The illustrious and puissant associations of Printing House Square will always suffice to make the journal proceeding from it a power. The representative character of the letters to the editor and the accuracy and actuality of its foreign correspondence still give it a place above most of its contemporaries. Abroad it is still regarded as speaking with official weight and as being in the innermost secrets of successive Governments. But this is a poor set-off against the loss to the English-speaking world of the really national position which the Times' first gained in 1784, under the second John Walter, with John Sterling as his second in the editorial command. What it then became, it remained till its very identity was threatened by incorporation into a group of newspapers, all bearing the impress of one controlling mind. This is a matter in which what has happened abroad not only doubles domestic experience, but deepens the reason for misgiving at the practical

monopoly of the press long aimed at, in this country, now for the first time almost achieved, by a few great proprietors. The group of Hearst papers in the United States is the best-known as well as most alarming instance of a journalistic process, which has been completed on the other side of the Atlantic some time since and is now steadily advancing towards perfection here.

In the long run, it may be said, every public has the newspapers it deserves or demands. On such a subject the susceptibilities of a prejudiced and unprogressive minority may perhaps some day be considered. One is disposed to wonder whether the American example must be permanently and minutely followed by a further increase of the space given to pictorial advertisements, with the result that posturing women, in various stages of dress or undress, start up in the middle of Parliamentary debates; while the latest chapter of the current diplomatic record, to the perplexity of all who read it, is diversified by vignettes, each of which, in the newspaper phrase, tells its own story,' of ladies or housemaids excruciated by backache, and of archers only less deadly than death itself shooting arrows poisoned with uric acid into the defenceless persons of the children of toil or the representatives of the rich and great. There is a place for all things, but these interpolations are as odious as the electric advertisements of bovril or whisky which disfigured our streets before the war, and prove only too clearly that journalism has sunk, or at least is in danger of sinking, from a liberal profession to a branch of business.

T. H. S. ESCOTT.

Art. 5.-THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ITALY.

1. La Politica Estera Italiana (1875-1916). By 'An Italian. Bitonto: Nicola Garofalo, 1916.

2. Sei Anni di Politica Estera (1903-1909). Discorsi pronunciati dal Senatore Tommaso Tittoni, Ministro degli Affari Esteri. Roma: 'Nuova Antologia,' 1912 (English translation by Baron Quaranta di San Severino). Smith, Elder, 1914.

3. Lettere dall' Albania (Giornale d'Italia). By A. Di San Giuliano. Roma, 1904.

4. La France et l'Italie: Histoire des années troubles 1881-1899. Par A. Billot, ancien Ambassadeur. Two vols. Paris: Plon, 1905.

5. Italien von Heute. By A. Zacher. Heidelberg, 1911. 6. United Italy. By F. M. Underwood: Methuen, 1912. 7. Internationalism; essays on Anglo-Italian relationships. By Lucy Re-Bartlett. Ward, 1916.

8. Diplomatische Aktenstücke betreffend die Ereignisse am Balkan. 13 Aug. 1912, bis 6 Nov. 1913. Wien, 1914. 9. Documenti Diplomatici presentati al Parlamento Italiano dal Ministro degli Affari Esteri (Sonnino). Roma: Sordi, 1915.

10. Diplomatische Aktenstücke betreffend die Beziehungen Österreich-Ungarns zu Italien in der Zeit vom 20 Juli, 1914, bis 23 Mai, 1915. Wien: Manzsche Buchhandlung, 1915.

MUCH has been written in English about the history of Italy down to the Italian occupation of Rome in 1870. But from that date onwards the British reader has few guides to conduct him through the complicated labyrinth of 'the third Italy's' political and diplomatic development. After the heroic age, ennobled by the great figures of Cavour and Garibaldi, there followed, as was natural, a drab and rather commonplace period, which made small appeal to the romantic historian or to the sensational journalist. Save for the striking personality of Crispi, the political stage of Italy was thenceforth devoid of actors whose achievements could fascinate the imagination of the foreign spectator. With the solitary interval occupied by that statesman, Depretis and Giolitti were