run through the public mind as rapidly as the dispatches that carry them.  “Mental touch is no longer bound up with physical proximity.  With the telegraph to collect and transmit the expressions and signs of the ruling mood, and the fast mail to hurry to the eager clutch of waiting thousands the still damp sheets of the morning daily, remote people are brought as it were into one another’s presence.”  (Ross-Social Psychology.)

The ordinary man now sees the world through his newspaper.  He absorbs facts and principles with the shades and variations the daily paper gives them.  Reports of events and announcements of policies are colored to suit the aims and opinions of the editors and proprietors.  Windy platitudes—­at least for those who know facts and have studied principles—­become gospel truth for the unthinking mass.  Public Opinion is thus conscripted by an “irresponsible power.”  This irresponsibility of the Press is without doubt the greatest menace of the day.  For, the opinions,—­we mean to say—­the propelling forces of the silent millions are at its mercy. . . .  And these silent millions make and unmake the world.

This great power of the Press is inimical to the Catholic Church.  By press, you will readily understand, we do not mean any particular paper, or a certain group of papers, but rather that formidable ensemble of tremendous financial backing, of world-wide information-services, of chains of papers that encircle the globe, of these various agencies that tap the telegraphic wires of every country and keep the cables hot.  The Hearst papers alone reach simultaneously four or five million readers daily.  From New York to San Francisco one man is leading the minds of these millions “to conclusions that he wants them to arrive at”—­What Hearst is for the United States, Lord Northcliffe is for England.

This great press is against the Catholic Church.  The total suppression of truths and of facts; the conspiracy of silence—­often more dangerous than an open attack; the coloring of news with shades of thought suited to a definite purpose; the partial admission of truth and the maimed relation of facts; the bold assertion of deliberate falsehoods; the deceptive headlines—­and the people live on headlines; the insinuating title which is often in flagrant contradiction to the dispatch it underlines:—­these are a few of its various strategies of attack.  “The Pope and the War,” “Quebec and the War,” “The Guelph Novitiate Incident,” are recent instances of what we refer to.

Some may object that the Catholics are of a rather susceptible nature and always expect “privileges”—­No, we only want the privileges of truth, we mean fair play, equality, and justice.

What we say of the Press can also be said of periodical literature and modern fiction.  “The very nature of periodical literature,” says Cardinal Newman, “broken into small wholes and demanded punctually to an hour involves the habit of extempore philosophy . . . and that philosophy, we know is not Christian philosophy.  The writers can give no better guarantee for the philosophical truth of their principles than their popularity at the moment and their happy conformity in ethical character to the age which admires them.”