THE NEWSPAPER OF TO-DAY

Evening Star, Issue 15139, 22 March 1913, Page 4

THE NEWSPAPER OF TO-DAY

£§V SPECTATORS OF ALL GREAT kJi \ EVJGNTS. is'tf-.tn the Wealth of news served, tip at ;;jtneb breakfast table every ui or urns by =.'oiit daily paper their lies a danger as }.\vell ng a, privilege, says 'Tho Tunes," v»P r "pos of tho Archbishop of Cnnter- ;. bury a reference to " the amazing ;, growth, of our daily and hourly know- °, ledge of what is happening" in the .'.-World." It is the danger lest we mis,.take news for knowledge and sensa- •' tiort for thought. .. "Our ancestors,"' says 'The Times,' . "even up to a few generations ago, wero for tho most part concerned only j -tntrt their own affairs. News of great events came to them now and then, but slowly and scantily. Hut for us history ■is made, as it were, before our eyes; and we are spectators of all tiie great; events of the- world. As a result we .expect something from life which our forefathers never expected. They, no doubt, got a spectator's amusement from tho doings of their neighbors. But there is this great difference—that they helped to make their own dailynews aud gossiped about people they . know and met every day, whereas we have no intimate concern with the great events and great people . ( of whom we hear so much. 'Tho natural result of all this is less intensity of feeling, and therefore less 'sense of responsibility; When we can survey mankind from China to Peru we must lose some interest in the parish pump, and the habit of surveying these wide prospects with which' we ourselves havo no practical concern makes us think of the whole world as a spectacle provided for our amusement. , Our interest in wars, or calamities, or fearful crimes has often a good deal of cold-blooded curiosity in it. No doubt wo try to ease our consciences bv expressing concern for the disasters of which wo read, hut that concern is often mixed with unconscious pleasure, liko tho tears we shed over a play. Newsboys would not cry bad news so eagerly if there were not a large public eager to hear it; and, as Mr Dooley has pointed out, it is always the bad .news that gets printed. If it really troubled us, we should not want to hear it. and should bo angry with thoso who din it in our ears.' News is not necessarily knowledge, even when it is all true; for, if Ave get nothing but a passing excitement from the news of some momentous event, it SB like a stone thrown into a pond that makes no chango to tho water except » few passing ripples. But it is easy to mistake these excitements for • thought and passing excitements of . feeling for sympathy. Real thought and real sympathy are difficult and exhausting for most men. They do not come by nature, but are the highest achievements of the will. "We prize them greatly and justly; and for thatvery reason are apt to be deceived by spurious imitations of them. Therefore it is necessary that we should moke.a sharp distinction between the artistic sympathy that gives onlv pleasure and the real sympathy that is sharply mixed with pain. The first is harmless and ennobling so long as its nature is clearly understood, but when it is aroused in us by real events, we are apt to give ourselves the credit for ifc; and, if we do that, wo confuse it with real sympathy aud become sentimentalists. That is the danger of our modern wealth of • news," concludes 'The Times.' "It turns us-into spectators of great affairs when wo should be_ actors in small ones, so that we think of ourselves as gods watching the world from a height, when we are really men with a little business of our owii to perforin in the plain."