We have, therefore, considerable reason for regarding the Press as being, in contrast with the legal profession, a self-reforming body.  In the last decade there has been an enormous mass of criticism of the Press by the Press.  There has been a tendency to exaggerate its irresponsibility.  A better case is to be made against it for what I will call, using the word in its least offensive sense, its venality.  By venality I mean the fact, a legacy from the now happily vanishing age of individualism, that in theory and law at least anyone may own a newspaper and sell it publicly or secretly to anyone, that its circulation and advertisement receipts may be kept secret or not as the proprietors choose, and that the proprietor is accountable to no one for any exceptional incomings or any sudden fluctuations in policy.

A few years ago we were all discussing who should buy The Times; I do not know what chances an agent of the Kaiser might not have had if he had been sufficiently discreet.  This venality will be far more dangerous to the Allied countries after the war than during its continuance.  So long as the state of war lasts there are prompt methods available for any direct newspaper treason, and it is in the neutral countries only that the buying and selling of papers against the national interest has occurred to any marked extent.

Directly peace is signed, unless we provide for the event beforehand, our Press will pass under neutral conditions.  There will be nothing to prevent, for example, any foreseeing foreign power coming into Great Britain, offering to buy up not only this paper or that, but also, what is far more important, to buy up the great book and newspaper distributing firms.  These vitally important public services, so far as law and theory go, will be as entirely in the market as railway tickets at a station unless we make some intelligent preventive provision.  Unless we do, and if, as is highly probable, peace puts no immediate stop to international malignity, the Germans will be bigger fools than I think them if they do not try to get hold of these public services.  It is a matter of primary importance in the outlook of every country in Europe, therefore, that it should insist upon and secure responsible native ownership of every newspaper and news and book distributing agency, and the most drastic punishment for newspaper corruption.  Given that guarantee against foreign bribery, we may, I think, let free speech rage.  This is so much a matter of common sense that I cannot imagine even British “wait and see” waiting for the inevitable assault upon our national journalistic virtue that will follow the peace.