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Page 15
This story has a real importance. It emphasizes a remarkable
characteristic of Lord Northcliffe's variability. It emphasizes the
romantic quality of his mind. Nothing would please him more than to
discover in one of his office boys an editor for _The Times_. His own
life has given him almost a novelette's passion for romance. He lives in
that atmosphere. Few men I have known are so free from snobbishness or
so indifferent to the petty conventions of society. The dull life of the
world is hateful to him. He would make not only the journalism of the
suburbs sensational, he would make the history of mankind a fairy-story.
It is difficult to understand his power in the world. He is not the
great organizer that people suppose; all the organization of his
business has been done by Lord Rothermere, a very able man of business;
nor is he the inspirational genius one is so often asked to believe. Mr.
Kennedy Jones is largely responsible for the journalistic fortunes of
Lord Northcliffe.
I am disposed to think that it is the romantic quality of his mind which
is the source of his power. All the men about him are unimaginative
realists. He is the artist in command of the commercial mind, the poet
flogging dull words into a kind of wild music. Mr. Kennedy Jones could
have started any of his papers, but he could never have imparted to them
that living spirit of the unexpected which has kept them so effectually
from dulness. Carmelite House could give the news of the world without
Lord Northcliffe's help, but without his passion for the twists and
turns of the fairy-story it could never have presented that news so that
it catches the attention of all classes.
I have never been conscious of greatness in Lord Northcliffe, but I have
never failed to feel in his mind something unusual and remarkable. He is
not an impressive person, but he is certainly an interesting person. One
feels that he has preserved by some magic of temperament, not to be
analyzed by the most skilful of psychologists, the spirit of boyhood.
You may notice this spirit quite visibly in his face. The years leave
few marks on his handsome countenance. He loves to frown and depress his
lips before the camera, for, like a child, he loves to play at being
somebody else, and somebody else with him is Napoleon--I am sure that he
chose the title of Northcliffe so that he might sign his notes with the
initial N--but when he is walking in a garden, dressed in white
flannels, and looking as if he had just come from a Turkish bath, he has
all the appearance of a youth. It is a tragedy that a smile so agreeable
should give way at times to a frown as black as midnight; that the
freshness of his complexion should yield to an almost jaundiced yellow;
and that the fun and frolic of the spirit should flee away so suddenly
and for such long periods before the witch of melancholy.
Of his part in the history of the world no historian will be able to
speak with unqualified approval. His political purpose from beginning to
end, I am entirely convinced, has been to serve what he conceives to be
the highest interests of his country. I regard him in the matter of
intention as one of the most honourable and courageous men of the day.
But he is reckless in the means he employs to achieve his ends. I should
say he has no moral scruples in a fight, none at all; I doubt very much
if he ever asks himself if anything is right or wrong. I should say that
he has only one question to ask of fate before he strips for a fight--is
this thing going to be Success or Failure?
In many matters of great importance he has been right, so right that we
are apt to forget the number of times he has been wrong. Whether he may
not be charged in some measure at least with the guilt of the war,
whether he is not responsible for the great bitterness of international
feelings which characterized Europe during the last twenty years, is a
question that must be left to the historian. But it is already apparent
that for want of balance and a moral continuity in his direction of
policy Lord Northcliffe has done nothing to elevate the public mind and
much to degrade it. He has jumped from sensation to sensation. The
opportunity for a fight has pleased him more than the object of the
fight has inspired him. He has never seen in the great body of English
public opinion a spirit to be patiently and orderly educated towards
noble ideals, but rather a herd to be stampeded of a sudden in the
direction which he himself has as suddenly conceived to be the direction
of success.
The true measure of his shortcomings may be best taken by seeing how a
man exercising such enormous power, power repeated day by day, and
almost at every hour of the day, might have prepared the way for
disarmament and peace, might have modified the character of modern
civilization, might have made ostentation look like a crime, might have
brought capital and labour into a sensible partnership, and might have
given to the moral ideals of the noblest sons of men if not an
intellectual impulse at least a convincing advertisement.
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