PRESS AND THE LAW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18825, 31 March 1923, Page 15

PRESS AND THE LAW

AMUSING SPEECH BY MR JUSTICE EYE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 1. Mr Justice Eve was one of tie honoured guests at the house dinner of the London Press Club last week, and made some amusing comments on London journalism os it is conducted to-day. “When 1 look round these tables,” he said, “and study the manner of man who is Irefore me, I somehow or other feel convinced that whatever I want to say, that however long I want to address you, next week you would still persist in issuing your piquant, stimulating, and meticulously voracious contentsbills; you would not be willing to abandon your annual contests for the host-kept cabbage patch or bod of Jerusalem artichokes; you would not for bear for a single day to inform mo what your not sales are; you would refuse to substitute the erudite, if dull, judgments of the Chancery Courts for tho somewhat rude details of the Divorce Court; your prophets would still dream dreams, but would never spot a winner except in cases of odds on; and finally, you would go on occupying valuable space by directing the attention of your registered readers to ingenious schemes for covering eveiy risk which no registered render is ever likely to incur.” There was, he continued, a great deal in common between (ho two professions of law and journalism. “We are both out to guide, instruct, and, incidentally, to live on tho public. Our most attractive attribute is our extreme modesty. You live by advertisement; we exist on our merits. It is yours to flaunt at my matutinal meal the'gigantic circulation of your paper, and to take away my appetite by informing me how many of tho registered readers (names and addresses suppressed) have been chewed up in tho last 2-1 hours, and of the enormous amount which you are about to disgorge to their executors, administrators, and assigns—a piece of information which I venture to think' contains a harmless supprossio veri, for I understand that the ultimate payer is not the newspaper, but the indemnifying insurance company. AYc, on the other hand! shun publicity. I should be afraid to say what amount of time is wasted in Lincoln’s Inn, and more particularly in the Temple, by barristers and others running after their friends in the press to ask them to refrain from mentioning that they have been retained to defend some notorious criminal or in an interesting divorce suit. But, seriously speaking, within tho space of half a mile are the permanent headquarters of the Law and the Press, and I make bold to say that in no area of similar extent on the ;a,.0 of the earth could you find two professions in which there are more, or an many, brave comrades, generous rivals, good sportsmen, loyal friends, and tough opponents than in our two professions.”