NEWS AND COMMUNICATIONS
By R. C. K. ENSOR
The publicity which this represents was, however, less meagre than it looks. In the first place, as railways were still in their infancy, the London Press did not cover the country as it now does. The provinces depended mainly on their local newspapers—as a rule weekly, bi-weekly, or tri-weekly—of which there were a great many, even though their individual circulations were small. Secondly, the high-priced papers of those days often went through a great many hands. In London an extensive business was done in lending copies of The Times for id. an hour. The copies thus used and handled were at the end of the day posted to country readers who paid 3d. for them. Posted a day later, they could be had for only 2d. In 1830 Charles Lamb, then living at Enfield, was content to buy his paper in the 2d. way. True, the full cost was then higher —7d. ; it fell with the lowering of the tax in 1836.
But there was another reason, why on the average each copy of a paper went further then than now. Great numbers of people could not read ; they had to be read to. In public- houses this was done on a large scale ; customers crowded there daily to hear the news read. One way and another we must take it that already in 1838 a big story, like that of a Coronation, was within a few days circulated pretty effectively and in pretty reliable forms all over Great Britain. Its circulation to thii. Empire was another matter. There were no telegraphic cables, and mails were transmitted by sailing-ships.
Pass now to 1911 and the coronation of King George V. Illiteracy had vanished ; railways and telegraphs were in fullest use. A population about doubled, with wealth more than doubled and more widely distributed, purchased perhaps 200 times as many newspapers—copies, that is, for the number of different journals had not increased but diminished. Moreover visual sense was now more directly appealed to. The invention of photography had enabled a much fuller and more impersonally accurate record to be obtained for the eye ; and the invention of the process-block had further made it possible to reproduce photographs on the printed page for the eyes of the million. The standards of the weekly illustrated papers were not materially lower in 1912 than now, and two daily picture-papers were already well estab- lished with large circulations ; though pictures were only just beginning to be a feature of the ordinary dailies. But a new seed of picture-making had now germinated apart from the Press—the film. By 1912 the technique of the silent film was well defined, and news-reels of an event like a coronation were possible. The whole thing, however, was on a humble scale. Cinemas built as such scarcely existed. The best premises were converted local theatres, and below them came a strange miscellany of petty halls and barns. The total accommodation was very small, and there was no regular cinema-going habit among the mass of the general population.
Today both Press and cinema have expanded. In 1912 a majority of British households still did not take in a daily paper. In 1937 the percentage that do not is negligible. On the other side it must be admitted that contents and presentation in the popular newspaper are more trivial now than then, and its columns are much more hastily glanced at. For " putting across " its readers an- event like a coronation, it relies preponderantly on its picture-page. And there its best efforts are decidedly eclipsed by the film. A philosopher who was asked what was the best point from which to view the Coronation might well reply : " The cinema." For in it you will nowadays get far closer, clearer, and more varied views than are possible otherwise save to a very few. And you get them the same day, without any long waits and discomforts, sitting at ease in your chair. The one big loss— and it is a big one—is that you are not shown colour.
But next comes quite a new factor. In 1912 broadcasting was unknown. Today, after comparatively a few years' development, it has become an enormous factor in daily life. The technique of describing an event as it happens—well studied and practised over events like the Derby or the. Boat Race—can here be used brilliantly for a great public end. And—though it remains to render reception really dependable over the greatest distances—already broadcasting is Empire- wide. The significance of this as enabling the oversea subjects of King George VI to be brought into mental contact with his Coronation ceremony at the very moment of its occurrence, must be obvious to everyone. Here, too, local distribution is even wider than the cinema's ; it is carried right into the home.
Behind it looms yet another novelty with a vast future— television. If King George VI's reign is as long as we all wish it, or even if it only reaches medium length, his succes- sor's Coronation, we may feel sure, will be visually witnessed by the great majority of people in these islands through television. That will not happen on this occasion, because television, though already launched officially on its public career, is as yet more chrysalis than butterfly. But when it comes, we shall be near finality. Beyond a perfect combina- tion of broadcasting with television it is not easy to see how the ideal popular presentation of a Monarch's crowning can go. The actual technique would be unlike that at present used in broadcasting. We should see and hear the ceremony itself, not merely hear about it ; and Horace's cld Segnius irritant animos tag would come into its own.
The glance which we have here cast over the past century's development in our means of communication, may, in one respect, appear a mere survey of mechanical changes. But it is much more than that. " Fellowship is life," said William Morris, " and the lack of fellowship is death." The mechan- isms which help to bind a great community together, and enable its members to be of one mind, serve no merely material purpose. For the very spirit of man is inconceivable, save as communication exists between different men ; the fact that we can talk-to one another is at least as important as, if not prior to, the fact that we can think. And all that we have been surveying is but an extension of that elementary human intercourse, much as representative government is an extension of the direct government possible only in tiny com- munities. For reasons partly economic and partly political, we have today to live in great societies. Without mechanisms for communication, they would either be ruled by force only, or not ruled at all. Press, film and broadcast may, of course, as the dictatorships show us, be made to rivet new forms of tyranny. But they may also operate to develop,as indeed they are indispensable for developing, that parallel growth of freedom with concord in ever-widening circles, which is the British ideal.
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