At the banquet given by the Government on Friday week
to the Imperial Press delegates, Mr. Asquith described the place of the Press in the national life. A Government only held office temporarily by favour of the suffrages of their Countrymen, but the Press was the daily interpreter and mouthpiece of the tastes, the interests, and ideas of the People. " Between one Dissolution and another it is the only authentic mirror and reflection of public opinion." As for the function of the Press in developing Imperial unity, Mr. Asquith said :—" Nothing, I think, can have struck you more in the speeches to which you have listened from Englishmen during the past week than that, when they came to deal with matters which concern the whole Empire, there was an identity of sense, sometimes almost an identity of expression, which seemed to produce the effect of men speaking with one voice and from one set of convictions."
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