HALTE—LA!

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 12, 22 November 1919, Page 3

HALTE—LA!

Francois Downs Type

THE cessation of publication of every newspaper in Paris gives rise to a good many thoughts. There are nearly as many people in Paris as in Australia, and, say, four times as many as in the whole of New Zealand. It, is very wonderful that the disgruntled members of a trade may by a common act leave this vast population without daily reading.

Unlike New Zealand daily papers, the newspapers of Paris are not merely news sheets, in which advertisements play the leading part, and there is probably no daily paper in the great city which is so valuable a "property" as an average New Zealand city daily newspaper. A curiosity of the French newspaper, in which it is totally distinct from the New Zealand variety, is that originality of thought and expression is not banned. There is no slavish mathematisation, and most comment on public matters is under the hand of a person who signs his name to it.

In New Zealand and many other countries the reader of a paper is pel nil ted to believe that a newspaper like Topsy "jest growed " —

and the "leaders" (which, of course, lea-, nobody) are not permitted to appear as the product of a single man but as the expression of opinion cfa machine (if a machine CAN express opinions).

Tie public of Paris—like the public of London—will buy a particular paper in order to read the opinion, the comment, or the news given by a favourite writer. In New Zealand "writing" in its true sense is most unfashionable, and the anonimity of newspapers impels writers to be as dull and banal as is consistent with the discharge of their mechanical functions and the lifting of their wages on Fridays.

The correspondence columns of New Zealand daily papers are not only often the most interesting part of the sheet, but the best written —not because the journalist cannot write interestingly, but because he is not permitted to, anonimity stifling his desire to be interesting.

How very dependent even the reader is on the ten fingers of the printer has not only been shown in Paris, hut in America, where a strike > of these useful persons—so it is said— has spurred some genius to invent a device which eliminates the necessity of typesetting. An America without its thousands of yelling newspapers, is almost unthinkable. A cessation for a week would be an astounding chance for truth to temporarily regain her throne. • • » The most curious thing about a newspaper, whether it is a French newspaper, an American bundle of printed matter, or a New Zealand series of advertisement, is that it is always full, whether there is any news or not. There is; as a

matter of fact, always more things to print than space to print them in, although perhaps ninety per cent of the things that are printed would never "get a hearing" if insatiable machinery had not necessitated more dope for the linotypes. In normal times the average newspaper reader looks for the thing he expects to find, and not finding it, says, "There's nothing in the rag." As a matter of fact, if he thinks hard enough over his daily paper, he will find that there are very many hundreds of pounds in it, and that he can find out in it where to buy a three and sixpenny article for fifteen shillings, or .some land that cost five pounds an acre for one hundred pounds.

The cessation of newspapers in an Australasian city would be a calamity second only to the Deluge. Heaven grant that we may never rush out with twopence in our hand to be met by the dreadful news that the printers are out. In the meantime, one can't imagine what Francois is striking for. He gets nearly quarter the wages his New Zealand brother gets even now.

But the great journalists of France who write with the pen of an angel are impotent when Francois rises from his keyboard and Jean throws down his "stick."