E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Richard J. Shiffer,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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THE FREE PRESS
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C 1
First published in 1918
(All rights reserved)
DEDICATION
Kings Land,
Shipley, Horsham.
October 14, 1917.
My Dear Orage,
I dedicate this little essay to you not only because "The New Age"(which is your paper) published it in its original form, but much morebecause you were, I think, the pioneer, in its modern form at anyrate, of the Free Press in this country. I well remember the days whenone used to write to "The New Age" simply because one knew it to bethe only paper in which the truth with regard to our corrupt politics,or indeed with regard to any powerful evil, could be told. That is nowsome years ago; but even to-day there is only one other paper inLondon of which this is true, and that is the "New Witness." Yourpaper and that at present edited by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton are thefullest examples of the Free Press we have.
It is significant, I think, that these two papers differ entirely inthe philosophies which underlie their conduct and in the social endsat which they aim. In other words, they differ entirely in religionwhich is the ultimate spring of all political action. There is perhapsno single problem of any importance in private or in public moralswhich the one would not attempt to solve in a fashion different from,and usually antagonistic to, the other. Yet we[Pg vi] discover these twopapers with their limited circulation, their lack of advertisementsubsidy, their restriction to a comparatively small circle, possessinga power which is not only increasing but has long been quite out ofproportion to their numerical status.
Things happen because of words printed in "The New Age" and the "NewWitness." That is less and less true of what I have called theofficial press. The phenomenon is worth analysing. Its intellectualinterest alone will arrest the attention of any future historian. Hereis a force numerically quite small, lacking the one great obviouspower of our time (which is the power to bribe), rigidly boycotted—somuch so that it is hardly known outside the circle of its immediateadherents and quite unknown abroad. Yet this force is doing work—iscreating—at a moment when almost everything else is marking time; andthe work it is doing grows more and more apparent.
The reason is, of course, the principle which was a commonplace withantiquity, though it was almost forgotten in the last moderngeneration, that truth has a power of its own. Mere indignationagainst organized falsehood, mere revolt against it, is creative.
It is the thesis of this little essay, as you will see, that the FreePress will succeed in its main object which is the making of the truthknown.
There was a moment, I confess, when I would not have written sohopefully.
Some years ago, especially after I had founded the "Eye-Witness," Iwas, in the tedium of the effort, half convinced that success couldnot be obtained. It is a mood which accompanies exile. To