THE PRESS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20906, 21 December 1929, Page 22

THE PRESS.

LORD HEWART’S EXPERIENCE.

MEMORIES OF FLEET STREET.

PURSUED BY A SPEECH,

(From Oca Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, November 7. Lord Hewart, Lord Chief Justice, as S ues t oi the Press Club, gave some interesting reminiscences of liis association with the Street of Ink, and his association with the newspaper press. « I do not think the people on the press appreciate its power. As the in■fluence of Parliament declines, I imagine the influence of the press will grow and who else is to govern the country it is difficult to judge,” ho said. It is a perilous thing for any man to speak of the press in the presence of journalists. In this connection I had a terrifying experience two years ago in Canada. There they make you speak a fter every meal, and sometimes between them (Laughter.) 1 was suddenly called upon to speak at a luncheon club. It was frightfully difficult to find a subject the law was too dull; politics were excluded, and some tempter suggested that I should make a few remarks on some of the defects of the press. (Laughter.) Though in an affee'iorrtc spirit I ventured to point out some of the defects in an otherwise blameless institution, I found that my observations were reported as if they were my complete views of the press. “That unfortunate speech, and the articles written about it, pursued me from Toronto to Winnipeg, from Winnipeg to Calgary, from Calgary to Banff, back into New York and BuflTalo, and afterwards to Ottawa and Toronto again. I then resolved that never again, so long as I lived, would I make any remarks in public in criticism of the press.”

PRESS GALLERY AT WESTMINSTER Referring to his early associations with the press, Lord . Hewart said; “ When once you have learned the smell of printers’ ink on a hot roller, you never entirely cease to like it.”

Of the Press Gallery in the House of Commons,- Lord Hewart said; “ I soon realised, when I went there, that leader writers were treated as rubbish.— (Laughter.) We were treated in every conceivable way with contumely.— Wo always had to sit in the back row. The gentlemen who sat in. the front row were the real artists; they could write shorthand.—(Laughter.) “It was explained to me by one of them that it was important that reporters should hear the words said, because people were going to read what reporters wrote, and it was not at all necessary that leader writers should hear anything, because nobody was going to read what they wrote.”—(Laughter.) confessed that while his associations with the press, were very happy, his object was always the Bar. It was a great delight to him to look- back upon those days when in the midst of reading a terrible number of law books —some of them interesting—(laughter) —he had the opportunity and good fortune of being able to attend any debate he wished to hear in either House of Parliament, or any case he wished to hear in any of the courts, with the result that during those years he listened to all the best advocates ‘ the Bar, both in the civil and criminal courts. That kind of opportunity could not be got anywhere except on the press. It was a wonderful thing, too, to be associated not merely with the politics of Europo and the destinies of their own country, but with the, whole fortunes and future of the civilised world.