MAKING OF AN EDITOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 38, 14 February 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

MAKING OF AN EDITOR.

JOHN MORLEY ON EMPIRE.

DISCOVERY OF J. L. GARVIN.

(By E.L.C.W.)

LONDON", December 28

"I wish he had stated tersely but precisely what is the exact difference between my views o£ our Empire, and the actual relations now subsisting among the parts of the Empire. Here you have now had at the C.O. one of the ablest, cleverest and most resolute men in public life, for three years (Joseph Chamberlain). Much eloquent language has been used, but what has been done? In what sense has Australia or Canada or South Africa been brought into any new or modiSed relation to the C.O. or the Parliament at Westminster? In what sense is the new move about Canadian tariffs anti-Cobdenic? Is it Dot clear that it is a move towards independence, than otherwise? Your namesake argued this in the House of Commons, and Mr. Chamberlain was not felt to have answered him. The idea of Zollverein was slain by the colonial premiers themselves. Those statesmen also, or some of the leaders among them, were just as frigid about federation ; and, like myself, deprecated the substitution of a stiff formal bar for a slack, strong chain, with plenty of easy play in it. All this deserves serious and accurate consideration. ..." Thus wrote John Morley to W. L. Courtney in July, 189S, and the words have their validity even now. The letter is given in "The Making of an Editor" (Macmillan), a memoir written by Mrs. W. L. Courtney of that great editor, her husband, the Oxford don, contemporary among others of Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London, and Dr. Knox, Bishop of Manchester, and of J Andrew Lang, whose career he touched more nearly than those of the two bishops, whose lives seemed at first to run in paths more akin to Courtney's than that of the famous litterateur and war correspondent. The book is an interesting one, and records the history of a career -which, in these days of hectic commercialism in journalism, can hardly Je paralleled. Courtney's connection with the "Daily Telegraph," for which he was a leader writer and literary editor, covered a period of forty years. His editorship of the "Fortnightly Review"—a task he carried on at the same time —lasted from 1595 till his death in 1928. The story of Courtney's discovery of J. L. Garvin, the only man now in Fleet Street whose work lias had as great an influence as Courtney's, is worth telling; how Mrs. Courtney, who was reader for the "Fortnightly Review," was so struck by an article by J. L. Garvin, to her unknown, on "The Future of Irish Politics." that she promptly sent it to the editor, who, to quote her words, "shared my enthusiasm, and he put the article in at once at the head of his May number." 1 shan't give him his name/ he said, *he can't expect that this time. I shall let people think it is by some person of high authority.' The article caught on; it was widely quoted. An election was threatening; the Rosebery Government was tottering to its falL In June the

crisis came over cordite, and throughout the subsequent contest 'The Bankruptcy of the Newcastle Programme' became an election slogan and figured large in the hoardings. Later in the year J.L.G. wrote again, this time over his own signature, 'A Party With a Future.' In those days Lord Kosebery was his God; and he still hoped to see that statesman of wit and balance and intellect recapture a leading place in polities. But our young contributor —he was still only in the twenties —wrote not only on home affairs, but increasingly, and with authority, on European politics. He was always writing—what was there that he couldn't write about? Sometimes it was literature, his favourite poets, Coventry Pat-more, Francis Thompson. But, in general, it was political subjects chosen for him by the editor as well as those suggested by himself." The editor of this record has the knack of summing up a period in illuminating fashion. Thus in recording the passing of Frederic Harrison and John Morley she says: "With them went the whole Victorian era and the great age of Rationalism. Harrison had grown more conservative with the years; Morley, consistent and unconquerable to the end, died, as he had lived, an uncompromising Liberal. H. W. Massingham, whom Courtney preferred to himself as better fitted to pay the last honours to the "Fortnightly's/"' greatest editor, wrote of Morley that he 'was the last of the great, true Liberals. With him there retires from the eye of history and, in effect, if not in name, from politics, the Liberalism that men knew as a definite thing, a scheme of thought different from Conservatism or Socialism, but with a meaning and principles of its own; a temper and habit of mind peculiar to the great thinkers and moralists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and a conception of Government consonant with much peace and happiness to mankind.' But Morley had no real place, she adds, in the post-war world. 'On the day {August 4, 1914) which opened the history of this new Europe and decreed its ruin Morlev left politics for e^er. "This had never been true of Harrison, older though he was than Morley by several years. His unquenchable vitalitv kept* him active and in touch with public life, even to his ninetieth "** To anyone who regards the ethics of journalism as a mattef of importance to the national welfare, a perusal of this book will evoke regrets for the passing of a time when mass production of news and views had not yet invaded the newspaper world.