"THE TIMES."

Bush Advocate, Volume XX, Issue 1027, 15 May 1908, Page 3

"THE TIMES."

The Berlin correspondent of the New York Evening Post recounts a conversation which is of particular interest just now, in view of *the latest blow at the prestige of The Times. Tho conversation was between two journalists and an ambassador, and the subject was The Times and its difficulties. "Ever since I was a yonng attache I ,can remember opening The Times with a feeling of awe, almost of reverence," said the ambassador. "Wherever I might- be stationed, and I have- been far in my time, whenever tliere was a political tangle anywhere, we always turned up The. Times and said: 'Let's just see what The Times says.' " Not long ago, said his Excellency, lie had been at a luncheon party where a German newspaper proprietor declaimed against the anti-German policy of The Times, and argued from the improved relations of the two countries, that the influence of the great paper was decreasing. A

London editor replied that his German friend was entirely wrong. Wherever his reporters went in London, to the officials, to the embassies, to members of Parliament, it was always the same story. The news they have asked about was not in The Times, so how could they have heard ,oi" it? The influence of The Times, declared- this London editor, lay in the circles .-in which it was read, and so long as The Times remained the "guide, philosopher and friend" to the ruling classes, so long would its power remain undiminished. "And your English colleague was right," said the Ambassador. The other journalist told a story. A friend of his father went out to the Soudan as war correspondent and died there. Years later the son met a man who said he had known the dead corres-pondent-and read the burial service over his body. "But," interjected the other, "You were a chaplain, then?" "Oh no," was the reply, "we hadn't got a chaplain, and we couldn't wait" for one, you understand, so I conducted the service. I represented The Times* you see." The other journalist nneverv v er forgot that tribute to the greatness of The Times.