The Free Press

The Free Press

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Free Press, by Hilaire Belloc
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Free Press
Author: Hilaire Belloc

Release Date: March 19, 2006 [eBook #18018]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FREE
PRESS***
E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Richard J. Shiffer, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net/)

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 more
because you were, I think, the pioneer, in its modern form at any rate,
of the Free Press in this country. I well remember the days when one
used to write to "The New Age" simply because one knew it to be the
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 now
some years ago; but even to-day there is only one other paper in
London of which this is true, and that is the "New Witness." Your
paper and that at present edited by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton are the fullest
examples of the Free Press we have.
It is significant, I think, that these two papers differ entirely in the
philosophies which underlie their conduct and in the social ends at
which they aim. In other words, they differ entirely in religion which is
the ultimate spring of all political action. There is perhaps no single
problem of any importance in private or in public morals which the one
would not attempt to solve in a fashion different from, and usually
antagonistic to, the other. Yet we discover these two papers with their
limited circulation, their lack of advertisement subsidy, their restriction
to a comparatively small circle, possessing a power which is not only
increasing but has long been quite out of proportion to their numerical

status.
Things happen because of words printed in "The New Age" and the
"New Witness." That is less and less true of what I have called the
official press. The phenomenon is worth analysing. Its intellectual
interest alone will arrest the attention of any future historian. Here is a
force numerically quite small, lacking the one great obvious power of
our time (which is the power to bribe), rigidly boycotted--so much so
that it is hardly known outside the circle of its immediate adherents and
quite unknown abroad. Yet this force is doing work--is creating--at a
moment when almost everything else is marking time; and the work it
is doing grows more and more apparent.
The reason is, of course, the principle which was a commonplace with
antiquity, though it was almost forgotten in the last modern generation,
that truth has a power of its own. Mere indignation against organized
falsehood, mere revolt against it, is creative.
It is the thesis of this little essay, as you will see, that the Free Press
will succeed in its main object which is the making of the truth known.
There was a moment, I confess, when I would not have written so
hopefully.
Some years ago, especially after I had founded the "Eye-Witness," I
was, in the tedium of the effort, half convinced that success could not
be obtained. It is a mood which accompanies exile. To produce that
mood is the very object of the boycott to which the Free Press is
subjected.
But I have lived, in the last five years, to see that this mood was false.
It is now clear that steady work in the exposure of what is evil,
whatever forces are brought to bear against that exposure, bears fruit.
That is the reason I have written the few pages printed here: To
convince men that even to-day one can do something in the way of
political reform, and that even to-day there is room for something of
free speech.

I say at the close of these pages that I do not believe the new spirit we
have produced will lead to any system of self-government, economic or
political. I think the decay has gone too far for that. In this I may be
wrong; it is but an opinion with regard to the future. On the other
matter I have experience and immediate