worker who means to serve the common weal as it is touched at all points by the newspaper, and to embrace every chance to do so. Often he will have to bide his time. All parts of the paper can be made to yield openings for social service and for presenting sound views of life.

Newspapers are no exception to the laws of growth. The theory that an endowed newspaper would produce the summit of excellence in journalism seems to me of doubtful foundation. Much striving lies back of every successful undertaking, and assured ease is not an incentive to striving. Endowed newspapers would by their nature be disposed to dullness, however lofty their aims, and so lose touch with most of us. Of significance in this connection is the fact that newspapers of every kind feel forced to appeal for patronage by professing devotion to the best interests of the people, even when such profession is mingled with a considerable measure of pretense. Of this selfish and venal kind of newspaper ownership there is too much when ownership has the power to dictate policies. But even then, saving grace can be and is put into such newspapers by men and women of character who contribute to filling their columns. Such workers will find their opportunity, be the fettering little or much, if patience and determined purpose be theirs. Statesmanship, which accomplishes results, learns to accept situations as they are and to make the best of them. So is it with life in a newspaper office. Honest resolve and resolute intent tell when diffused through the staff of any journal. In many an instance character and influence have thereby become stamped upon the product.

If newspaper workers are often shut up to making the best of whatever opportunity comes to them, what does this signify? They confront a law of growth that obtains in nature and in all human relationships as well. There is only one satisfactory way out:

Act well your part, there all the honor lies

and all progress as well.

But while one has faith, through knowledge of them, in the ability and willingness of the mass of newspaper workers to deal honorably and sensibly with the future of newspapers, what of some present tendencies and shortcomings in journalism? An editor who for a quarter of a century has done admirable work as a leader on an im

portant paper in a Western State, confesses to discouragement. He sees "the rising tide of sensationalism and fatuity engulfing the daily press." Taking note of something appearing in a trade publication in challenge of demoralizing tendencies in modern reportorial "color work," which too often pays scant regard to the newspaper's obligation to make a truthful picture of life, "its fluctuations and its vast concerns," this Western editor writes:

I wonder if we are ever going to be able to get back to the old system of honest, straightforward reporting? The boys are now trained to write stories. It is almost impossible to secure from even the best reporters of the present day a good, sensible, serious account of a public meeting or any important event. They are striving all the time to make their stories picturesque and to show that they have a talent for descriptive work. One great curse of the business as it seems to me just now is the desire of newspaper writers to intrude their personality between the reader and the event they are covering. Does it not seem to you that the reputation of the daily newspaper has gone completely to "pot"? Sometimes I think the whole business has become hopelessly disrupted and needs a smashing revolution to put it on its feet again. But the churches, colleges, most of the professions and many lines of business are subject to the same general form of criticism from the public. Perhaps we are no worse than other professions, but does it not irk one who has spent his life in active newspaper work to feel that the thing he believed at one time to be a profession has degenerated to a mere trade and a mighty squalid trade at that?

Without falling into such depths of pessimism as this, -I have large respect for the journalism of the United States to-day and confidence in its future, despite all faults -many a newspaper man solicitous for his profession, thanks God that the Associated Press keeps faith with its mission of reporting things as they are, without distortion or undue personal intrusion. It would indeed be a universal misfortune if the tendencies that distress the Nebraska editor should ever extend to the roiling of this fountain head of news gathering. That will never be permitted so long as the leadership of the Associated Press continues to be in wise hands. Motley has its uses, but for daily wear it would become intolerable. News must be illuminated, both in reporting and editorial writing, but when reporters (( are striving all the time to make their stories picturesque and show they have a talent for descriptive work," straightforward narration will fail of the consideration it merits. The honesty that distinguishes great

work in literature, painting and all the arts carries suggestion to those who record history as it is passing. Much clarifying power flowed from the blue pencils of Dana and Bowles, masters of newspaper making, and regardful of perspective, good taste and the expert use of English. Our many Schools of Journalism can find profit in studying editing and reporting as they were exemplified by the New York Sun and the Springfield Republican. Telephones, typewriters and machine composition tend to promote carelessness in the preparation of copy and in proofreading. When the old niceties are preserved under the pressure of machine speed, it means that newspaper people are pouring out life blood in the process. That is the price to be paid for the best results in a newspaper office, and how many are cheerfully paying it!

Fortunate is the newspaper that possesses an atmosphere saturated with the purpose to render disinterested public service in a self-respecting way. Every worker may contribute to the creation and perpetuation of such an environment, and he or she can make no more important and helpful contribution to the future of journalism. Such an atmosphere can be made to permeate the entire establishment, and it is operative in calling out the finest qualities that reporters and editors and all the rest can bring to the paper. In such an office the rights of the reader are made paramount, and this proves a solvent of many problems in the writing and typographical presentation of the news. Under the sway of this basic point of view it is recognized that the average of popular intelligence is much above the demagogic conception of it, and that it pays for newspapers and politicians to deal sensibly and as adequately as may be with matters of public concern. There are happily many newspapers which afford standing illustrations of the applicability of this contention, as well as those that serve as flaming challengers of it. As a rule of newspaper conduct, too, it is safe to affirm that in the long run all problems, quite as much in the business office as in the editorial rooms, can be dealt with most advantageously by considering first the obligation to give the reader full measure of truthful, painstaking, bright service every day in the year. Newspapers were established for their readers and should be conducted for them. Nowhere is this better understood than by intelligent promoters of our

highly organized modern system of publicity. Excellence in newspaper making gives advertising agents a business asset which they value. No owner or publisher, therefore, need fear that the best his editorial and news departments can produce will impair the prosperity of the paper, due regard being paid to the sympathetic portrayal of matters of interest to the people-and the wider the rcognized range of such interests, the better. There is high value, too, in a discriminatingly liberal use of well selected reading matter that entertains and informs, as Col. Nelson of the Kansas City Star so successfully demonstrated. There is loss in living too exclusively in the events of a day.

Newspapers face special necessity for worthy service as the staggering world seeks to recover its poise. Problems of surpassing acuteness, magnitude and moment must be given consideration, and out of the attitude of the people toward them will come results. Readjustment that is worth while is to be made by clinging to ideals worthy of those who have preserved to us opportunity to enlarge our faith in the ability of self-governing peoples to adjust themselves to changing conditions and enlarging human needs. A profession that lives and moves and has its being in the homes and offices and lives of the people is able, above all other agencies, to make them feel that sense of personal responsibility that will be necessary to carry us through.

Where is there an agency of service such as newspaper workers can command at this time and all times? Where else is there greater need for thought and care, for the best exercise of the finest human wit and conscience and intellectual and spiritual adequacy, in order that those who play upon this harp of a million strings shall do it worthily, to the benefit of their fellows and the glory of God?

SOLOMON BULKLEY GRIFFIN

A SOLDIER AT THE SORBONNE

BY GEORGE BOAS

IF there is one thing we Americans must accept the blame for, it is the State University. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world; it is thoroughly American. Early in February, 1919, by a lucky turn of fortune and the mismanagement of a detail I was to be assigned to, I was able to enter two of Monsieur Picavet's courses at the Sorbonne and one at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. Having been an instructor for two years in the University of California, I was naturally interested in comparing this American product with its French counterpart. For they do stand for similar things in their communities; they practically sum up the spirits of them they serve. The University of California represents the ideals and satisfies the needs of the State of California. If you were to look for one institution most adequately typifying a State which achieved its grandeur by the efforts of gold seekers, you could do no better than to select that showy collection of buildings opposite the Golden Gate, in which everything native to the soil is hidden and even the architecture, pieced together from Italian bell-towers, Corinthian columns, and New York National Banks, reminds one of a civilization struggling to be born. And the Sorbonne in its sober and serious way at the side of the Collège de France and opposite the Musée de Cluny reminds one of the complicated and well-knit character of France.

When I went to Berkeley, after about twenty-two years of life on the Atlantic Coast, I was inspired and delighted. The armies of men and women students, the climate, the landscape, the business-like management, the friendliness of the people, all were of a sort bound to charm one whose Western frontier had previously been Grant's Tomb. It was my good fortune to work under a man whose high