SIR HENRY IRVING AND THE PRESS.

Patea Mail, Volume XI, Issue 113, 5 October 1898, Page 3

SIR HENRY IRVING AND THE PRESS.

Sir H. Irving presided at the 53rd anniversary banquet of the News' paper Press Fund. held lately at the Hotel Metropole, London. There was a very large attendance. In proposing the toast of the evening, ‘ Success to the Fund,’ Sir Henry Irving said I have heard of public men who say they never read the newspapei s. That remark has been attributed to a bishop, and perhaps there are kinds of abstinence quite easy tQ bishops, but difficult to other mortals. But I am chiefly conscious of the debt of gratitude we all owe to the press. Ihe newspaper ■—•say what you will of it is the ini' mediate recorder and interpreter of life. Morning and evening it offers uathat perpetual stimulus which makes the zest of living. Be your interests what they may, though you abstract your mind from the tumult of affairs and devote it to art or science, you cannot open a newspaper without the sensation of laying your hand upon the throbbing pulses of the world. In a newspaper, at a glance you are in touch with the elemental forces of nature, war, pestilence, and famine; and you are transported by this printed sheet, as if it were the fairy carpet of the Arabian, from capital to capital, from the exultation of one people to the bitter resentment and chagrin of another. You behold on every scale every quality of humanity, everything that piques the sense of mystery, everything that inspires pity, dread, or anger. It is a vast and ever-changing panorama or the raw material of art and literature. There are complaints that the raw material is more generally interesting than the artistic product (Laughter.) The newspaper is a dangerous competitor of books, and those who write plays and produce them may wish that the circulation of a daily journal would repeat itself at the box office. But it is no use protesting against rivalry, if it be the rivalry of life, and the gentlemen of the press who are engaged in stage managing a drama, which, after all, is the real article, must always command more spectators than the humble artists who seek truth in the garb of illusion. I cannot sufficiently admire the enterprise of these newspapers, which keep the diary of mankind. In time of war their repre-

sentatives are in the#hick of danger; and though he may subscribe to the „ dictum If familiar to playgoers (laughter)—that the pen is mightier , than the sword the war correspondent >is always ready to give lessons to the enemy with the less majestic weapon. Nowadays all the world is on tiptoe, and the soul of journalism must be prophetic, because it has to do for u curious and wide-eyed public what was f r-. o for a much simpler generation . ! -?«t a”d fbe astrologer. We ought to be thankful that this somewhat perilous business is conducted on the whole with so much discretion and breadth of mind.