OBITER DICTA.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17749, 28 April 1923, Page 12

OBITER DICTA.

(By K.) Democracy will have read, with dismay of tho proposal, discussed in the House of Lords tins week that tho newspapers should bo prohibited from p nig the details of ptpceedm* in the Kvoroo Court. Even if it forgets the almost scriptural benediction of the art of seeing life steadily and seeing it whole, Democracy will remember that it was for freedom from the veto of the Peers that the Jack Cades, tho CromwoUs and the Horatio Bottomleys fought through the centuries. My sympathies are very much with the Peers —not because I would have the British democracy deprived of the offalsauce which makes life for it worth living but because I have a regard for newspapers. To one who is obliged to read, as some of us are, half a dozen •English dailies, it is very easy to understand the feeling with which an Admiralty and Divorce Judge once described himself ae a man "with one foot in the eea and the other in a sewer." For the sewage flows in an unending tide through nearly every British newspaper. Tide of sewage, I call it. Mr Massingham, in the "Nation," prefers to say "flood of pruriency." Why shut the comparatively decent public-house on Sunday, he asks, and leave the Sunday papers free to print columns of garbage? It is not only indecent, he adds, but positively unfair:

Why, te example, should the fastidious aristocrats for whom the "Morning Post" spreads its frolicsome feast, or the workmen whose choice is for the "Herald," bo cut oil from euch delights by the mero delicacy of their proprietors, while followers of the "odds" or pursuers of the Nonconformist) conscience can revel in the Eussell baby or track the next deleterious olario to his lair? This seems wrong.

In America, in France, and in New Zealand, the newspapers do not print this nasty stuff. If they did, it would doubtless be greedily consumed. The ardent anarchist would retort that they print worse stuff —that "The Press," for example, periodically poisons the publio mind by remonstrating with the Bolsheviks.

Tne little bouquet which is handed to our own newspapers in the previous note is offered by way of counterblast to the half-brick with which l>r. Thacker bade farewell to his l chain, his chair, and his critics. His opportunity came on. Monday when the City Council was discussing the schedule in which it was revealed that he and Mr D. G. Sullivan were notably lax in attending meetings. (Why the papers snould have regarded their , absences from meetings as faults I cannot imagine: those absences were really their most useful service to the city). I qyote from the report of the Council meeting:

Councillor Hunter: One editor has got it (the schedule). The Mayor: Eats will get anything.

An impulsive, spontaneous fellow; we shall miss him. But his going will relieve us of one of our many annoyances. It is not his opinions, or whatever one should call wha.t goes on in his head, that one minds, but his method of expressing them. For example, on this occasion he wished to say the newspapers ought not to print the schedule. This is how he said it: "It is a sacred thing if a matter of committee is divulged in any way before -reported to the committee." It isn't what he. says we mind, but the singular way he says it.

In time, no douht, if the Mayor had remained, wo should have become tolerant of him, at least ih these notes. And tolerance is a virtue j and a virtue which, is less rare than one might suppose. The best example of it is the latest, exhibited in a complaint made

by the Editor of an American MetlwL ist seminary's "alumni bulletin''; "Tho men of ■ Chapter want to -^ themselves very Btrongly as opposed growing practice among otir aJuMSi el fct/ the chapter-house as a rendezvous for J/J parties. We don't care -whether the »w£ get drunk or not, but we do object to ft? gutting drunk in the cbaptci bdag«.* '^ Instead of commending this disoruaia. ating patience to those whose uaiW ing purpose is to compel me to &££ cocoa, I shall add one ftore which is fit for a pla«, beside S Lnbouchere's famous explanation tint he did not complain of Gladstone h*>S! an ace up his sleeve but that hTJSjf object to the suggestion thjj-tt! Almighty put it there. <JM % example is the indignant fepfr j . Labour politician to some critics oft ta own side who protested tgainit Mi acceptance of a Downing street Wt fast. "I do not pretend to be tim being bribed," he said. "I «& ito be bribed as any man. But t-S protest against the suggestion th»Vl ! can bo bribed with half a Miuagt; iSf I a piece of bacon." " { I y "Perhaps," a correspondent vritik' '•'you will think this amusing rjktjjZthan stupid, but I leave you to c»2 with it." "Tins" was an article Msome local paper unidentified in *}&'' protest was made against the on the Cathedral lawn. 2he ttppeJtf my correspondent for a few welwtS 1 words cannot be granted, for 1 email grievance against that houwjji* myself. It represents a street arab, with these words: 1 ** You can mafce this impoeiiUe &■s£"> ocuntry, etc. '. My grievance is the use of the tflfr "this country." Why not i WjMs <l country," or "New Zealand" are the elderly ears of the and perhaps that is why when!t% hear "this country" where th%jjj| , i . would hear "New they-$i that they ore hearing only d<is" country—thifl one—which is <tjbt&[ geographical substance or Bometo|V a map or a book of place in which certain \ When the American talk* of | l ti»' 1 i United States" he is sub-conscious protest against iwffil nationalisation —or is it denonprah tion?—that lurks in "this, com& When Shakespeare wished to talkl)js|; country, he said, not "this «tfwif| but, with all the emphasis of, ili«g|| This blessed plot, this etrfh, will this England. U :?smt If the Cathedral authorit!es,»i|||J the alteration required, I «>wf||j nothing whatever against &^||||| Mr Wilford is"* suapecteJ tention to appear in or on Monday, but as come into the open, the OjunHffimfl test remains a barren shall contribute this week/ t|H|fl in the way of 'P° shall be a quotation from Mr Philip Guedalla: ' '^l^ffil What a pity it is that life do not dress better! ol f JiSKjH polite amusement the P e noflMij|9|Hffll| the "Tailor and Cutter',' perfections of a new CMittl of a solemn leader-writer ,rt *PP"^^ffls^B the disturbing tendency of cel.'or to deepen the entertaining. Bat at the is something in it. One muoh to appearances: Baorifica too little. Mr may, for'all that I nO,f »' purists in neckwear into foffs|jl||Ml collar from behind which regards the universe of strength to Uosi George's post-war IjlgaMi coat with a bowler ***», so reassuring to foreign Conf ejenoea sinca* it nesa of their own an insuperable obstacle ,to; *fllH»Bt These are mysterious a *' te the faof that all historiani *f*Mßß' which has kept them oUt f S|iKW