vidious sense. I firmly believe that the money-makers supply a very useful element in human society. I can supply a fact in support of my assertion. Lord Northcliffe, some twenty years ago, said to me in one of those moments of selfrevelation which were common with him as a young man and were in many ways extremely engaging: "I don't pretend to be a statesman, or even a politician, or to know much about public affairs. What I do know, is how to produce a paper and how to sell it." There, I think, he exactly diagnosed his own mental powers and limitations. He was a great merchant, or, if you will, a great broker in the wares of journalism; but he did not go further.

As long as he made it his main business to exploit and develop the machinery, physical, moral, and intellectual, of the press his success was almost unbounded. At the outset of his career almost everything he touched in the journalistic world not only turned into gold, but was from his point of view a well-deserved success. In the perfectly legitimate arts of the producer and salesman he was unrivaled. No matter was too small for his consideration, no enterprise or speculation too big. Though not an expert in any of the many branches of his undertakings, he managed to be what was quite as useful that is, a successful chooser of men to help and serve him. But, though he relied upon the advice of experts, he showed his ability in knowing when to accept that advice whole-heartedly and when to reject it and trust to his own speculative instincts. If he determined to buy or found a newspaper, he followed prudent external advice unless it conflicted with his main and essential decisions.

It was the same story when he was considering whether he should commit himself to new machinery, and to new methods of using that machinery, or whether he should be content to go on in the old ways. Again, in the matter of salesmanship-that is, in the matter of pushing his wares-though his ideas were not his own and were not even original, he managed to use them so ingeniously and so boldly that they took on a kind of originality in his practice of them. Take a very simple example. When he was developing the "Daily Mail," I remember his telling me one of his plans for raising the circulation. He had returns of the daily sales of his paper in every city in the Kingdom. If he found that the proportion of sales per head of population in a particular town lagged behind the general average, he immediately set all his machinery in motion to ascertain the cause of this town's failure to absorb his paper. He kept asking the question, "Why does only per cent of the population here take the 'Daily Mail' when three times ≈ take it in a neighboring town?" He persisted in such interrogations till he had got the answer and applied his

remedy. At the same time, complementary investigations were going on in the towns or districts which showed the highest percentages of readers. Was there any peculiar or extraordinary reason why they should read the "Daily Mail" in greater numbers than their neighbors? If not, then valuable lessons might be obtained by studying the action of his local agents, and applying these principles of action elsewhere. He was armed with facts for screwing up his circulation elsewhere. "What man had done in Blackchester man could do in Whiteville"-that was the "slogan" applied to those engaged in pushing his paper in new districts or in old districts which lagged behind.

But this, though clever and enterprising, was only a good example of the simple art of the vigilant salesman in all kinds of trades. There was nothing actually original about it, though there was a great deal of genuine enterprise and skill in the application of the artifice. No great vision and no special understanding of human nature or of the English people were involved.

As in the case of most successful money-makers-for once more we must never forget that it was in this region that Lord Northcliffe could claim unqualified success-the methods employed seemed to have very little to do with brain power or the higher intellectual gifts. Successful money-makers are rarely thinkers even in their own special trades, and this was, I think, specially true of Lord Northcliffe. As I felt obliged to point out in my obituary notice of him in the "Spectator" of August 19, Lord Northcliffe was not a daring innovator or speculator in the newspaper world, but rather a skilled and prudent user of other men's experiments. He once said to me with great impressiveness, and as if he were saying something which he regarded as one of the lodestars of his life. "Never be a pioneer!" He went on to explain that the pioneers in the various walks of life and business were never the men who succeeded. They went forward and, if they took the delights of exploration, they certainly did not get any other reward. The wise man watched the pioneer at work. If the pioneer fell and failed, and so showed that the ground was impracticable, the forest too thick, or the current too strong, he did not follow him. If, on the other hand, the pioneer succeeded, the wise man could proceed in confidence. The good business man was, that is, he who best availed himself of other men's experiments, but did not experiment himself.

I think an analysis of Lord Northcliffe's methods would prove that he almost invariably followed this plan. He never plunged. He never put his foot into what was alleged to be a ford without the feeling that he could draw it out if, after all, the water should prove dangerously deep. He did not found the "Daily Mail" till he had seen

the experiment of the "Evening News," which was his first venture in daily journalism, succeed. He bought the "Evening News" very cheaply as a going concern, and watched it very carefully. Up till that time he had only been an owner, though a most successful owner, of popular weekly newspapers. When, however, he saw that with wisdom and prudence a halfpenny evening newspaper could be made, not only a good newspaper, but financially a very successful paper, he argued that what could be done with an evening paper could be done as well with a morning paper, or indeed a great deal better. Morning papers, in England at any rate, find it easier to get advertisements than evening newspapers. But when, fired by his experiences in the "Evening News," he determined on creating the "Daily Mail," he took every possible care to make his venture successful. He traded, as it were, both with the living and the dead in journalism to find new features and paying features. Especially did he study American models. These afforded him plenty of useful pioneers. He also studied the old ways of journalism in England and adopted features which for some reason or other had been allowed to drop out.

When I say "studied," I do not mean that he himself studied very carefully; but that he got other people to study for him, and then used his judgment. But all this, though excellent business, did not prove him a great journalist, a great editor, or even a great newspaper organizer. It only showed him a great man of business.

I doubt whether, in the true sense, Lord Northcliffe ever reflected or ever thought. His mind, as is so often to be noted in the case of the successful money-makers, was exceedingly superficial, as were, indeed, his mental interests private and public. He was, however, keen and alert and genuinely interested in new things. But he liked them as a clever child likes toys-something to be first welcomed as a mystery, but soon only tolerated till a newer or more amusing treasure could be found. He never thought things out, nor, indeed, realized the need of doing so. Above all, he never understood anything in the true sense of the word.

Though he talked much about publicity and, in a sense, practiced it on an enormous scale, and made a large fortune out of it, I feel certain that he never obtained a full and true view of the significance of the thing he was dealing in. Like so many men of his kind, he could throw up a series of balls and keep them spinning in the air, but he could not explain even to himself how his act of legerdemain was accomplished. To put it in another way, he had the faculty possessed by many dealers in the arts. There are plenty of picture dealers and dealers in antiques of all kinds who are totally without any artistic sense or knowledge, and appar

ently without any sensibility in regard to the beautiful. For all they know, Guercino lived in Spain and Goya in Bologna. They confuse centuries, epochs, and schools with the most marvelous profusion. Yet these same men instinctively know a good picture and can often tell far better than men of true learning, scholarship, and understanding in the philosophy of the aesthetic whether a picture is a genuine work or a forgery, and also by whose hand it was painted.

So

A sincere artist will often tell you that, though he has profoundly studied the work of, say, Leonardo all his life and has a sure intelligence in regard to the master's mind, if it comes to valuing a picture or being quite sure of its authenticity, he would very much rather trust to the judgment of Mr. Blackstein or Mr. Whitestein than his own. Lord Northcliffe, though he did not understand publicity in the true sense, was often instinctively an exceedingly good judge of what would prove successful publicity and paying publicity. Just as a man may do "big business" in rubber without understanding the way in which rubber is produced, or what is its future, or what even are its uses, so Lord Northcliffe traded in publicity without knowing much about it or, at any rate, without understanding it in the higher sense.

A proof of this want of true understanding is to be found in that part of his life which was so conspicuous a failure. During the latter part of the war, and still more after the peace, Lord Northcliffe persuaded himself that the power of the press was greater than it really was. He dreamed of becoming the leader and director of the country, not indirectly and as a great influencer of public opinion, but actually as Prime Minister! That was, I am assured, his visionary aim. His lever was to be the newspapers he controlled. He found himself utterly mistaken when, having quarreled with Mr. Lloyd George as the obstacle to his ambition, he determined to remove him from power. Apparently, Lord Northcliffe was so little experienced or, at any rate, had so little understanding of his strength, that he thought he could write Mr. Lloyd George down-i, e., destroy him by leading articles. If he had been able to reflect, he would have learned that, though Mr. Lloyd George might destroy himself, he could not be destroyed by newspaper opposition. He had, in fact, utterly misconceived the nature of the power of the press.

No one thinks more highly of the profession of journalism, no one is prouder of the position of the press, than I, but it must never be forgotten that the one and almost only power of the press is publicity. Pope in his "Essay on the Characters of Women," speaking of women's place in the world, declares that power is all their end, but "beauty all their means." So with us newspaper

men.

Power may be all our end, but publicity is our only means.

But, granted this, what are the consequences? One of the most important is that, though we may "boom" a statesman in whom we believe or whom, for some other and possibly less worthy motive, we want to keep before the public, we cannot unmake him by the arts which we used to make him. As Dr. Johnson put it, "No man is ever written down except by himself." A very few moments of thought will show that this is due to the fact just noticed, the fact that publicity is the newspaper's only means to power. If you are always writing a man down, you are in effect always advertising him, always giving him publicity. But in giving him publicity you bring him before the public eye, and then the public, in that intensely independent way which is theirs, judge him from their own standpoint. But, while judging for themselves, they are very apt to note and so to discount the animus with which a man is attacked. Eulogy is a lubricant which, though it may occasionally weary, does not raise the contradictiousness of mankind. On the other hand, persistent antagonism is sure to bring into operation the law of reversed effort. If one sees a person persistently abused in the press, one is very apt to take the other side.

But there is a higher motive than this of contradiction. When a man is brought before the public merely to be com mended, the thing is soon over and forgotten. If, however, he is arraigned before the court of public opinion, the jurors realize that they must go more thoroughly into the matter. They must hear both sides and judge the facts. But it may well be that in this process of adjudication they take a different view to that of the journalistic prosecutor. This is indeed a happy circumstance. It makes the journalist careful in his attacks, and so acts as an antiseptic. But this limitation of the power of the press Lord Northcliffe never understood, and perhaps never even tried to understand. He took the view of the flatterers of the press-i. e., that a newspaper can do almost what it likes with public opinion. He was convinced that by a careful manipulation and presentation of the news the public, without being directly deceived, could be made to take the view which the newspaper wanted it to take. This danger of manipulation is no doubt real, but it is not nearly so great a danger as it appears to be. Fortunately, there are many safeguards and correctives. If not, the peoples who depend upon their newspapers so greatly as do those of the English-speaking world would be of all men most miserable. As a class newspaper men have an instinctive feeling that they must tell the news, and tell it honestly. I am not going to pretend that this is from a double dose of original virtue vouchsafed to my profession. What I have termed an instinct, no doubt, to a great

extent arises from the knowledge, conscious or sub-conscious, that publicity is our greatest business, and that those who ignore this fact and sell adulterated wares (that is what manipulation of the press comes to) will in the end do bad and not good business.

Here I reach a very interesting point in connection with journalism. I firmly believe that the newspaper that is run as a business concern-run, that is, to pay, i. c. run to sell its readers what they want to buy-is likely to be a better paper and also to serve the community better than the newspaper which Las ulterior ends. The ideal newspaper proprietor, in my opinion, is the honest tradesman, the man who says, in effect, of himself and his work, "My business is to sell the public a good, sound newspaper, a paper which contains nothing that has been adulterated, nothing that is a sham, nothing that is poisonous. I am the servant of the public, but I claim the right to act the part which every honorable and high-minded servant acts. I will obey my master up to a certain point, and no further. If he asks me to do a foolish thing, I may do so, because, after all, the choice is his. If, however, he asks me to do a low, mean, or disreputable, let alone a criminal thing, I must refuse and tell him plainly what I think of his order."

What the ordinary citizen desires to get from his paper is the facts, and the whole of the facts. Now, he may have the highest belief in Mr. So-and-So's good intentions, but he does not want to have his news colored by them, however good they may be. Still less does he want to have his news distorted by the personal likes or dislikes of a proprietor. Therefore he greatly distrusts the newspapers owned by men who are in the newspaper business, not as tradesmen, but for ulterior objects-party objects, personal objects, or pecuniary objects other than those derived from the direct sale of a newspaper. American newspapers, I may say parenthetically, have come to their great position and will, I believe, continue to hold that position by the fact that they are so largely owned by people who are openly and obviously engaged in the trade of selling newspapers, and who know that in the end they can do sound business only by selling "a straight and sound line of goods." Another good example was the London "Times" in the past. The Walters were essentially honest tradesmen. They had a great public relying upon them for a particular class of intellectual product, and they supplied that product. They did not look beyond their trade. For example, when Lord Palmerston lectured Delane on the want of consideration, public spirit, and so forth, which he had shown in publishing a piece of news which was inconvenient to the Government, Delane cut him short with the brief but crushing sentence, "You seem to forget, Lord Palmerston, that my business is publicity."

That was an answer worthy of the "Times" at its best. Delane was speaking greatly of a great trade. I am quite content not to put it higher than that. I do not claim to be engaged in an art or a profession.

In a similar way, Lord Northcliffe, while he was successful-that is, up till middle life-was a true trader in news even if not one who could claim to be very well inspired or very thoughtful or very reflective. The moment, however, that he began to use the great lever he had forged for other purposes than those for which it was meant he got into difficulties and began to lose his influence. Curiously enough, in some confused way Lord Northcliffe seemed to have realized this himself. Only a few months ago, in a wild pamphlet which he wrote about millionaire newspaper proprietors, he made a vehement attack on men who owned newspapers, not because they wanted to carry on a successful trade, but because they had ulterior motives. With a good deal of his invective on this point I found myself in agreement. Un

fortunately, however, Lord Northcliffe was like the lady of whom Congreve wrote in his famous poem:

She is the thing that she despises. He was all the time doing the very thing that he was denouncing-i. e., the man who used his papers, not for trade, but for other purposes.

Before I end this sketch of Lord Northcliffe and the journalistic lessons of his career I want to say once more that, though I have had to speak plainly about him, I am strongly touched by the tragic irony of his end. I should have been only too glad if I could have honestly said, "At any rate, he succeeded in doing what he tried to do." Respect for the truth will only let me say that he succeeded in this up till the middle of his life, and then that the abundance of his success led him to failure. How this came about is easily seen by any one who regards the facts of his life. When still a very young man, and without experience he was not one of the people who possessed an intuitive knowledge of life and men-he reached a position in

which he was toadied, flattered, and cajoled by the majority of those with whom he came in contact.

Considering the temptations to which he was exposed, and considering also the facts of his career, one might very well say that the wonder was, not that he suffered a kind of intellectual shipwreck, but that he did not do a great deal more harm than he in fact did. That, in my opinion, is the just view, and, being so, I feel bound to record it.

I have a word to add by way of postscript. My readers may think it strange that I have said nothing about Lord Northcliffe and the part he played in the war. I have not dealt with his war record because I believe that his influence on the war was absurdly exaggerated. If, then, I had touched the matter, I could not have avoided being strongly polemical. Also, I must have spoken more harshly than I want to speak. Finally, I wanted to put what I think is a true account of the man before the American public, not to plunge into an infructuous controversy.

I

I

NEVER camped in all my life. hated exercise. I was afraid to sleep with my windows open. So now when I see a husky, salmon-colored American camper, proud of his fresh sun-blisters, I look at him resentfully. Tents with wooden floors! Real gas stoves! Portable phonographs! Andthe crowning glory of it all-folding bathtubs! And he calls this camping! Why, if a Russian housewife laid her eyes on all the American camper's kitchen outfit, she would unhesitatingly forsake her city house for the "wild" life in the open.

"To rough it"-you call your camping! You luxury-swamped sybarites! And you have the nerve to call the poor Russian city-mole an effeminate person!

In Russia we seldom camp of our free will. And it is not because we are more effeminate than you. If we do not open our windows at night, even if it overlooks the sheltered street in the city, it is because we cannot afford to waste so much heat. To sleep with the windows wide open in winter-why, it would call for steam heating, or at least for allwool underwear! No average Russian was ever as rich as that!

And to move to the country with all the array of canned food, stoves, cameras, Victrolas, and-above all-with a bathtub! The luxury of ancient Rome had nothing on you, modern American campers!

When I saw for the first time the famous tent city of San Diego, on Coronado Beach, I thought almost with tears: "If one-tenth of our peasants could afford a tent dwelling with a

SHEER ENVY

BY MARIA MORAVSKY

screened porch, a swinging hammock, a gas-stove, and a rubber bathtub, we would consider ourselves a nation of millionaires!"

Sheer envy is and will be the predominant feeling of a foreigner gazing at all these camp luxuries until you be

THE DREAD
TYPHOON

Do you remember the island of Yap? It figured not long ago in the press despatches as a center of international discord. But Yap is not young as a disturbing factor in the world; it is the nest from which the dread typhoon arises to carry death and destruction to eastern Asia and the ships of the Pacific.

LIEUTENANT CLIFFORD A. TINKER recounts the family history of the typhoon in a forthcoming issue of The Outlook.

gin sharing them with the great barren camp called the after-war Europe. We need your trading in portable bungalows, little stoves, hand showers, cheap articles of hygiene, and scores of civilization's substitutes for immediate use, because the war-ridden countries cannot be rebuilt at even a year's notice. make the beggar-like conditions of life less painful many a European country should be put on a camping basis. Temporary homes, with at least a ghost of comfort-this is what we need immediately. What you mean by reconstruction is a thing far too solid for us.

To

You want to rebuild us at once and thoroughly; to put us firmly on our feet; to give us modern electric fixtures, fine railways (provided you obtain profitable concessions for building them), up-todate plumbing (provided we can pay millions of rubles, marks, or kronen to your engineers). Wonderful task, and well worth spending your and our energy and money! But, as the ancient Slav proverb goes: "A golden plate is of no use to the hungry."

Do not give us a golden plate alone. Don't start a wonderful system of plumbing without giving us in the meantime cheap water filters-to save us from cholera and her sister epidemics. A tent erected immediately is better than the most comfortable house next season. We have to live somehow in the meantime. We have to camp, not for pleasure, but for the sake of saving our lives, to "rough it" in the severest sense of the word. And who, if not Americans. campers par excellence, will teach the world how to camp?

M

Y brother Nathan at this time carried through a bit of youthful business en enterprise which added greatly to his joy and mine. Having collected some old hemp rope, which was very scarce at the time, he received enough money for it to enable him to buy a handsome bay pony. This became our joint and most treasured possession. Nathan in later years became noted as a horse fancier, a driver of trotters, the owner of a fine stable. It is an old axiom that the man who really knows horses knows men also. Nathan knew both. But few things ever gave Nathan and myself as much pleasure as the possession of that pony. So it was a hard blow for us when he became a Yankee prisoner of war.

On April 16, 1865, General James H. Wilson, commanding 15,000 Federal soldiers, marched against Columbus. Lee had surrendered nine days earlier, but this was unknown to General Wilson and to our citizen soldiers, composed chiefly of superannuated men and schoolboys. There was a feeble defense, and Wilson's army took possession. Soon afterwards the rabble from the factories commenced looting. Led by drunken Federal soldiers, they burned the cotton warehouses. Lost were the savings of many, including most of my father's. All horses were seized, our little pony among the rest. I never saw him again, though I still retain a vivid mental picture of him. Frequently since, when I have met that fine old veteran, General Wilson, who is still among the living, hale and hearty, I have jestingly reproached him for taking my most treasured possession.

"Go South" had been good enough advice in 1852, but "Stay South" under what was known as Reconstructionstay there under conditions serious enough to break the strongest and discourage the most enterprising-this was not suitable to my father's enterprise. Again he forced a situation analogous to that after the '48 Revolution-much more serious, though. He was older.

The North offered an outlet for enterprise. There, too, my father could more readily dispose of the remainder of his cotton. His idea was to pay off pre-war debts contracted in New York and Philadelphia and make a fresh start. Isidor was able to help him considerably. A youngster of nineteen, but already a sagacious man of experience, a stay of two years in London had netted him several thousand dollars. Sent there as secretary of a commission to buy supplies for the State of Georgia, he had turned to brokerage when the effective blockade of Southern ports stopped shipments. He had made his profit selling

Confederate bonds. Returning, he used part of the proceeds to purchase a house for his mother and added the balance to his father's money, with which they established a wholesale china and glassware business in New York City.

When the Confederate Government canceled the commercial obligations of Southern merchants to Northern creditors and ordered this indebtedness paid to the Government instead, the debtors regarded themselves morally free from paying their creditors. My father, though, was true to his original obligations, saying:

"I propose to pay my debts in full and leave to my children a good name even if I should leave them nothing else."

The dry-goods house of George Bliss & Co. was his principal New York creditor, and the sum between four and five thousand dollars. When my father called about the debt, Mr. Bliss was amazed, asked many questions, and even then found it difficult to grasp how this man of fifty-seven, with four children, stood ready to plunge into a new venture and handicap himself at the start by paying off an old debt.

"I don't think you are fair to your family and yourself," said Mr. Bliss, "to deprive yourself of the slender means you tell me you possess by paying out your available resources. I will compromise with you for less than the full amount, in view of the hardships of war and your family obligations."

PREPARING FOR COLLEGE

Isidor arranged for my schooling. A picture of Columbia College in my geography text-book set me to thinking how wonderful it would be to study there. Being only fourteen and a half when we came to New York, and not having the entrance requirements, I was instead enrolled in the Columbia Grammar School. It was my first experience with a high-grade school. The teaching was much more thorough. It seemed to me I had to learn everything anew. Considering the modest income of the family, the tuition fee and the cost for books were large, but my father, economical in all other respects, was liberal beyond his means where education was concerned. My brother, moreover, was desirous that I should have the advantage of the college training which circumstances, notably the war, had withheld from him.

I appreciated to the full the privilege I was permitted to enjoy, and applied myself whole-heartedly to study. The school regulations required that the parents should fill out a blank each week stating, among other things, the number of hours we studied at home. Three or

four hours were the average for most students, but, as my average was fully double that, I felt rather ashamed to give the exact number, so I stated less.

The school was at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street and our home was in West Forty-ninth Street. I always walked both ways, saving carfares and at the same time conserving my health.

Despite my hard work, I made a poor showing, though on one occasion I shone with accidental glory. It was the custom when a question was asked to pass it from pupil to pupil, and to set the one who gave the correct answer at the head of the class. It so happened once that I gave a fortunate answer and moved forward to occupy the seat of scholastic eminence. I sat there enjoying a near view of the teacher's countenance, wondering how long I would thus remain distinguished, and looking back occasionally to note how the last row looked. At this moment a visitor entered who was none other than the inventor of the telegraph, S. F. B. Morse, whose grandson was in my class. Knowing the custom and observing me in the seat of honor, he remarked upon my having a large head in comparison with my body, something like himself, and added that I must be a bright boy. There was humiliation rather than elation in being thus praised when I, as well as the rest, knew I did not deserve it.

The principal, Dr. Bacon, encouraged us individually when the time for college-entrance examinations approached in the spring of 1867. For me he had consolation in addition to encouragement, for he feared that because of my lack of early training I might not pass. There were still two weeks before the examination. I crammed night and day. I knew that I could not expect my father to keep me in school another year when after two years of preparation I had shown myself deficient. That thought was my spur, though I am quite sure that both Isidor and my father, knowing I had done my best, would have insisted upon my taking another year for preparation.

I was not prepared, therefore, for so surprising a result as to be the only one in my class to pass all examinations without a single condition. "Lucky dog!" said the others who flunked; and I could not but admit it was luck rather than brilliancy. The professor who examined my classmates in ancient geography was the author of the text-book upon which the examination was held. A meticulous pundit, he regarded that book as supreme and absolute. A good answer, if not exactly according to that book, was as good as no answer a