Drumont was very useful for telling one innumerable particular fragments of truth, which the Official Press refuse to mention—­such as the way in which the Rothschilds cheated the French Government over the death duties in Paris some years ago.  Indeed, he alone ultimately compelled those wealthy men to disgorge, and it was a fine piece of work.  But when he went on to argue that cheating the revenue was a purely Jewish vice he could never get the mass of people to agree with him, for it was nonsense.

Charles Maurras is one of the most powerful writers living, and when he points out in the “Action Francaise” that the French Supreme Court committed an illegal action at the close of the Dreyfus case, he is doing useful work, for he is telling the truth on a matter of vital public importance.  But when he goes on to say that such a thing would not have occurred under a nominal Monarchy, he is talking nonsense.  Any one with the slightest experience of what the Courts of Law can be under a nominal Monarchy shrugs his shoulders and says that Maurras’s action may have excellent results, but that his proposed remedy of setting up one of these modern Kingships in.  France in the place of the very corrupt Parliament is not convincing.

The “New Republic” in New York vigorously defends Brandeis because Brandeis is a Jew, and the “New Republic” (which I read regularly, and which is invaluable to-day as an independent instructor on a small rich minority of American opinion) is Jewish in tone.  The defence of Brandeis interests me and instructs me.  But when the “New Republic” prints pacifist propaganda by Brailsford, or applauds Lane under the alias of “Norman Angell,” it is—­in my view—­eccentric and even contemptible.  “New Ireland” helps me to understand the quarrel of the younger men in Ireland with the Irish Parliamentary party—­but I must, and do, read the “Freeman” as well.

In a word, the Free Press all over the world, as far as I can read it, suffers from this note of particularity, and, therefore, of isolation and strain.  It is not of general appeal.

In connection with this disability you get the fact that the Free Press has come to depend upon individuals, and thus fails to be as yet an institution.  It is difficult, to see how any of the papers I have named would long survive a loss of their present editorship.  There might possibly be one successor; there certainly would not be two; and the result is that the effect of these organs is sporadic and irregular.

In the same connection you have the disability of a restricted audience.

There are some men (and I count myself one) who will read anything, however much they differ from its tone and standpoint, in order to obtain more knowledge.  I am not sure that it is a healthy habit.  At any rate it is an unusual one.  Most men will only read that which, while informing them, takes for granted a philosophy more or less sympathetic with their own.  The Free Press, therefore, so long as it springs from many and varied minorities, not only suffers everywhere from an audience restricted in the case of each organ, but from preaching to the converted.  It does get hold of a certain outside public which increases slowly, but it captures no great area of public attention at any one time.