STATEMENT ANSWERED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 151, 27 May 1935, Page 8

STATEMENT ANSWERED.

THE PRESS AND VAR

Per Press Association

CHRISTCHURCH, May 25. Tim freedom of the Press was described bv Mrs J. M. H. Tripp ns one of the greatest factors making for world war when slio spoke on behalf of the Victoria League at an Empire Day conversazione last night. Hie speeches were broadcast, and Mrs Tripp said she was glad to get her statement on the air, ior it was true. “Nothing.” Mrs Tripp declared, “sells a newspaper like a war. Most of the newspaper scouts are out ill the world seeking sensational or disturbing news like battle, murder, and sudden death, and they Tovget that the response should be ‘from these, good Lord, deliver us.’ ” i Commenting on the address the Christchurch "Times says in an editorial, after remarking that queer stuff is sometimes talked at Empire Day fuentions: “The argument ill brief was that wars created a tremendous demand for newspapers, and therefore that newspapers must always ho wanting war. The simplest answer to that statement is to show what happened in Britain during the war years. In 1914 imports of wood pulp for paper manufacture weie 890,000 tons; in 1918 they were 190,000 tons. The consumption of newsprint in 1918 was about one-fifth of that in 1914. The price of newsprint was quadrupled, advertising fell awav to nothing; because the ordinary trade of the country was at a standstill, profits disappeared, and newspapers were able to carry on only where they had accumulated reserves in the pre-war years. Similar conditions obtained in every country which was at war. Newspapers, were suspended. not in units, but by hundreds, and many journals that managed to survive tlie war years succumbed in the first years of peace. The war indeed was far more fatal to the Press than tlie depression has been.”