The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1922. VISCOUNT NORTHCLIFFE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18560, 16 August 1922, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1922. VISCOUNT NORTHCLIFFE

Just what place Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, better known of late years as Viscount Northcliffe, will occupy in the estimation of the historians of the future must be left for Time to decree. To his contemporaries he was a big and forceful personality. He has been rightly described as the Napoleon of the British Press, and it may be that when the years to come have made possible a dispassionate and impartial examination of his achievements in the light of their consequences, it will be found that his life and character and influence were much more intimately .akin to the life and character and influence of the Little Corporal than those who first discovered the likeness ever dreamed of. He was a conqueror. He entered Fleet Street a raw recruit, and by dint of indefatigable industry and fearless enterprise he lived to become one of the most powerful and commanding figures in the realm of Britisu journalism. From the very offset of his career he marched forward with the stride of a Colossus, and he never stopped or wavered until from the lowlv stenuine’-slnne nf '..‘.nt.re,,.”

he reached the lordly summit of his [ ambition as controller of “ The j Times.” En route he gave Britain i “ The Daily Mail ” (a wonderful ex- ' ample of daring and successful enterprise), acquired “The Evening J News,” and became the controlling r authority of numerous other import- ( ant newspapers throughout the " United Kingdom. Thus he became , not only a great proprietor-journal- j ist,. but a great force in national and ; international politics as well. It is[ 4 as to whether in the main he wielded j ’ that force for good or ill than we|( must, perforce, leave the future to i decide. That he accomplished much c good is beyond question: that he was * responsible for much that was not a good is probably equally certain, at t any rate in the estimation of his 1 rivals and opponents. Lord North- J cliffe knew his business. He claimed j to be one of the very few newspaper't proprietors who had made his money t out of newspapers, and the rest he 1 regarded as interlopers. He was ’ not prepared, so he openly declared, j to accept in his own business of pro- < ducing newspapers the dictation of 1 shipping kings and cotton kings and [ coal and cocoa and oil kings. That, j as the “ New Statesman ” recently t remarked, was an argument which 1 aroused a sympathetic echo in the 1 heart of many a professional journ- ‘ alist who had no reason to entertain a tender regard either for Lord t Northcliffe or for his views. In the t direction of his newspapers, Lord ”

Northcliffe would brook no man's in- 1 terference, however wealthy or in-1 ftuential that man might happen to i be, and that he was prepared to ex-' ercise the most drastic measures in' defence of his independence is instanced by the following letter which! he wrote to a person who had the' impudence to attempt to interfere; with the editorial policy of “The Daily Mail” during the railway strike of 1919:—“J hope you will understand I have no intention of allowing my newspapers to be influenced in this or any other matter by anyone. . . Rather than be dictated to by anyone, or any body of men, I will stop the publication of these newspapers, and, in view of your letter, I have so informed the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association.” But while sternly and scornfully rejecting the attempted dictation of outsiders,. Lord Northcliffe never posed as the lone-hand creator of his enormous enterprises. He had a genius for “picking his men:” he gathered about him a great organisation of able and brainy men, and of them he demanded the best that they could give. Although perhaps too apt to essay the role of “ Kingmaker,” and to try to make and unmake Cabinets, Lord Northcliffe was an ardent and .almost fanatically enthusiastic Imi perialist, and there is something almost pathetic in the fact that his I death has followed so closely on the world tour which he recently completed. and upon which he embarked I in the interests of the Empire.