Views on the Press The Press has been honoured by
a good deal of attention from public speakers in the past week. The Speaker of the House of Commons is conscious primarily of its defects, which undeniably exist, but his generalisations on the subject are (as reported) too sweeping to form a profitable basis for discussion. The Lord Chief Justice, once a journalist himself; records a very different verdict. The pen almost trembles with emotion as it records the gratitude expressed by Lord Hewart, and on the whole merited by all but a small minority of newspapers, for " the skill and judgement, the labour and the pains, the discrimination, the restraint and the enterprise which with perfect regularity and punctuality day by day exhibit the glittering panorama of the world before our too careless eyes." As a whole a free Press has abundantly justified itself in this country, and its critics are, as Lord Hewart suggests, a little inclined to take it for granted and underestimate the difficulties every paper has to face in the endeavour to supply its readers with adequate and accurate news. Finally Sir Frederick Maurice, at a school speech-day, emphasises very wisely the desirability of acquiring early the habit of reading newspapers with discretion. In that connexion it may perhaps be mentioned that the sixth forms of over 15o schools in this country, and some abroad, are now using The Spectator as basis for the study of current questions. * * * *
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