THE NEURASTHENIC PRESS.
VIPHE greater portion of the Press during the war has fi played an admirable part. It has been sane and sknified, whether, like the Daily Telegraph, it has given a reasoned and sympathetic support to the Govern- ment, or whether, like the Morning Post, it has been boldly. and severely critical. It has not given way to panic and . it has pursued no selfish aims. Even at moments Of great difficulty, perplexity, and anxiety it has refused to be " awed by rumour," and has man- resisted the temptation, always present in such extrenies, to talk about betrayal, or to search for scapegoats rather than for remedies. Again, it has endured a somewhat confused and puzzle-headed Censor- ship With calm and good temper. Taken as a whole, it. has done a patriotic work, and sustained the character of England for sobriety, moderation, and good sense, and for a balanced mind in storm and stress. Ours is a profession of which any man may be proud.
Unfortunately, however, there is a section of the journal- istic world which has shown just the opposite qualities, a section which we can only fitly .describe as " the neuras- thenic Press." That Press is not wicked, nor is it corrupt. It is well-intentioned, and it means to be patriotic, but the results of its action are often deplorable. While honestly trying to injure the enemy, it frequently in effect helps and sustains him.' While desiring to raise and invigorate opinion at home, it as often as not produces exactly the opposite result. It has raised endless unnecessary suspicions. BUt " Suspicion clouds the mind," whether of men or of nations. Though no doubt it has occasionally done good by its shrill calls of " Danger l " it has again and again destroyed the advantage to be gained from its warnings by deafening the nation with its confused and confusing clamour and its angry innuendoes. It has done the right thing in so wrong a way as almost to obliterate the good.
• If one looks in any medical work giving a description of "neurasthenia," one finds the spirit of the section of the Press to Which we allude depicted in a way which is positively ,nanny in its appropriateness. In the first place, we are told, that the symptoms of neurasthenia are as follows : (1) -A general feeling of malaise " combined with a mixed state of excitement and depression " ; (2) Vertigo and "a transitory clouding of consciousness " ; (3) " Weakness of memory, especially for recent events " ; (4) " Morbid heats, • flushings and sweats." Next, we are told that neuraethenia shows many strange and peculiar symptoms, such, for example, as " Batophobia—fright of things falling." Further, there are to be observed " mental ruminations," in which there is a continuous flow of con- nected ideas from which there is no breaking away. Some- times, too, there is " Arithmontania "—an imperative impulse to count (cf. the persistent efforts of the group of newspapers in.question to add up the German losses). Again, neurasthenic cases " often exhibit a marked emotionalism and readily manifest joy or sorrow ; they may be cynical, pessithistic, introspective, and self-centred, only able to talk about themselves or matters of personal interest, yet they frequently possess great intellectual ability."
One must not of course push the analogy too far, but that it exists it is impossible to doubt. One of the marked symptoms of the neurasthenic is bitterly to resent any attempt to calm him and to point out the folly or ineptitude of panic. He almost invariably takes such efforts very ill, and resents them as personal attacks due to a malignant conspiracy to injure him. We may perhaps be pardoned for giving a somewhat humorous example, and one which specially concerns us. It is to be found in Thursday week's Evening News. The efforts of people like ourselves to deprecate panic in regard to air raids, though we are anything but indifferent to the sufferings they have caused, and to see them in their true proportion, are denounced as proofs of callousness and cruelty. ." It is easy," says the Evening News, " to shut one's eyes to the ghastly . record of suffering a hundred miles off, easy to doze under the hillside with Simple, Sloth, and Presumption." The livening News then continues :- s "-The Sise dator advises ' the country ' to ' take its punishment as English boxers have always taken theirs—without funking.' We are not thinking of Boxer:a, however, btit of thatlittle hey Whose arm was cut clean through by a bomb, that baby found dead in its mother's arms, that woman whose body was severed as she stood, Bible in hand, before her class. Have these and such as, these no claim on State protection P The niost grotesque of all the fallacies is the notion, put forward by the Westminster Gazette on February 8, that if we keep very still and quiet the Germans will not be so likely to repeat the raids, while if we agitate the Zeppelins will come repeatedly and in stronger force. So we are told that the Black Douglas, as he prepared to storm Roxburgh Castle, heard a woman within crooning to her infant :
• Hash ye, hush ye, little pet ye, The Black Douglas winna get ye.'
The truth is, of course, that the Zeppelins will try to come as oftea as the weather over the North Sea is favourable for raiding. Let the question be frankly asked in Parliament, ' Are the homes of England at the enemy's mercy—from the air 2 ' "
The reference to the Westminster Gazette is the first symptom of the recent efforts of the neurasthenic Press to find a special victim, and make a special attempt to shout down those who have dared to point out that we are not only making a most unpleasant exhibition of ourselves in screaming when we are hit, but are actually encouraging the Germans in the utterly false belief that they are doing us serious moral and intellectual damage by means of Zeppelin raids. The Times, we are bound in fairness to say, has hitherto kept clear of the neurasthenic attitude, or has only been neurasthenic in very small patches. Speaking generally, it has maintained the honour of the journalistic profession. Unfortunately, however, it gave way on Monday last to a bad attack of that unrestrained cross-patch temper which so often marks the complaint with which we are dealing. Under the preposterous heading of "Dishonest Journalism," it devoted a preposterous " to what it terms a scandalous libel on the Times perpetrated by the Westminster Gazette. The Westminster Gazette had accused it of encouraging the Germans to continue their attacks in the belief that they aro really alarming this country and weakening its spirit. Into the controversy between the Times and the Westminster Gazette, and the attacks and counter- attacks which have raged during the week, we do not intend to enter. The Westminster Gazette is perfectly competent to take care of itself and is in no need of help. On the side- issues, which have nothing to do with the present case- i.e., the action of the Westminster Gazette in the years before the war and at the very beginning of the war— we will only say that, though we strongly disliked and regretted the attitude of the Westminster Gazette towards Germany before the war, we hold it both unjust and injurious to enter upon such matters at a time when what is essential is not to call attention to past mistakes, but to secure that national unity which is necessary to win the war. As long as the Westminster Gazette is con- centrating all its energies, as it undoubtedly is at the moment, on beating the enemy, its past is no concern of ours.
If, however, the Times is so zealously angry as to be unable to argue with an opponent because of its pre-war record, we may remind it that the week before the article to which it so much objects appeared in the Westminster Gazette, the Spectator had taken a precisely similar line in regard to the injury done by panic outcries over the Midland raid. With the Spectator, as the Times must admit, there would be no danger of the issue being clouded by the raking up of any previous errors in this respect. The Times cannot allege that the Spectator was ever pro-German, either in the years that preceded the war or when peace and war hung in the balance. Nor, again, can it allege of the Spectator' that it made no effort to warn the nation as to its want of preparation. We advocated National Service long before the Times gave it its support. We championed the movement for the National Reserve, an effort which, we gratefully acknowledge, was strongly supported by the Times. We asked that a million rifles above and beyond visible needs should always be kept ready for a great improvisation of troops—a matter in which the Times did not give us any aid whatever. We do not, however, want in any way to boast of our own record, and only mention these facts to show that the Times cannot escape from the essential issue by calling the Westminster Gazette names. The Westminster Gazette by no means stands alone in regarding explosions of Batophobia as calculated to help the Germans and injure us. That is at the present time the thought of the majority of sane and well-instructed minds,
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