DUTY OF PRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 17, 20 July 1931, Page 7

DUTY OF PRESS

ENDING THE TIME-LAG

SHAW ON RUSSIA

"Journalism largely provides the minds for the public of this country,"] said Mr. George Bernard Shaw when j proposing "The Profession of Journalism" at a luncheon given by the London District of the Institute of Journalists, says the "Daily Tolagraph," "and most people have minds which havo been made up on a model which is several hundred years out of date, or else they have no minds at all. The difficulty about that is a difficulty which in! modern scientific language phraseology I must call the time-lag. "Take my own case. I am a journalist and nothing else. I am not one of those men of letters who devote their lives to saying things beautifully, and not caring what they are saying provided it is something well worn. (Laughter.) I do not bother myself about that. What I have got to do is to tell people the facts about life and its meaning in, our own time, as wo exist; and my business is to .impress all this as forcibly as I possibly can and as intelligently. That is to say, I am a journalist. ■"I had rather a rough time, and unfortunately Nature has constituted me in such a way that when a thing happens I perceive that it has happened. Most people take a period according to the subject. Most of the .people with the least time-lag take about twenty years, a^id most of the newspapers take twenty years, like the rest. (Laughter.) Imagine me trying to make my living as a journalist, and my always being twenty years ahead of tho newspapers." (Loud laughter.) PUBLIC HANDICAP. ' '' The whole difficulty is that the public have a terrible time-lag, and tho great duty of journalists is, if possible, to abolish it. They must make people understand that the world is continually changing, and there is no good trying to go on with the ideas that were obsolete before they were born." (Laughter.) ■' Speaking of the Russian revolution, Mr. Shaw said: "The Press has not yet recognised that that revolution has taken, place. In 1878, when Lord Salisbury was tho English Foreign Minister, he had, for an aristocrat and a diplomatist, an exceptionally intelligent mind; but he refused to allow England to .be represented 'at the French Exhibition because France was a : republic. He was convinced that the Bourbons, or at least the Bonapartes, would come back and organise the return of the old regime. He was nearly a century out'of date." , Proceeding, Mr. Shaw said: "Washington, you will remember, was one of the' blackest scoundrels that ever existed; and Tom Paine was an atheist whose books the police chased about. It took us a very long time to recognise that the United States was a republic come to stay. Lord Salisbury probably never found out that the French republic had come to stay. "We have not found out yet that the Russian Soviet has come to stay, and as a consequence we.have thrown away not only one of the most magnificent commercial chances that any_ of us could ever hope to see in our lifetimes, b,ut also the great opportunity of helping to build up this republic." AUSTRIA AND GERMANY. Turning to. Germany • and Austria, Mr. Shaw begged his hearers not to start a time-lag about the Customs Union lately effected between them,because it was bound to come, and not only an economic but a national union as well. •■■ ' "They are bound to unite," he said. •'Every person who has not got a bad time-lag must have recognised at once that they have done it, and we have got to accept it. "Wo have not only thrown.away a tremendous commercial .opportunity, Mr. Shaw went on, "but thrown away a political friendship which may be of the greatest possible'value to us. Our political friendships in the future cannot be with the Plantagenets, the Bourbons, the Valois, and the Eomanoffs. They will be with modern republics, and a largo number of them involving, like our own country, a very great deal of Communism .which we cannot possibly do Without for a single week." Speaking of the wireless as a possible competitor to journalism, Mr. Shaw said: "You can hear exactly what sort of man it is who is speaking. People for whom we write never know the sound of our voices. I even think that journalists ought to be made to' go about the city in a large car in the style of a circus, labolled 'These are the l men whoso leading articles you have been reading.' " (Loud laughter.) In conclusion, Mr. Shaw said: "The moral of it all is that we have got to abolish our time-lag, face the future, and stop dreaming about the past." Then, after resuming his seat, Mr. Shaw recollected himself, rose again, held up his glass, and exclaimed, "I beg to propose the Profession of Journalism. God help.it." And with a good-humoured laugh, the toast was duly honoured. , "