If we
were to fail to keep together, our cause, I believe, would still
prevail, but at a cost that we dare not contemplate, by way of anarchy,
and the dissolution of societies, by long tortures, and tears, and
martyrdoms. If we refuse to die in the ranks against the German tyranny
we can keep our faith by dying at the stake. There are those who think
martyrdom the better way; and certainly that was how Christianity
prevailed in Europe; you can read the story in Caxton's translation of
the _Golden Legend_. But these saints and martyrs were making a
beginning; we are fighting to keep what we have won, and it would be a
huge failure on our part if we could keep nothing of it, but had to
begin all over again.
The business of the press, then, at this present crisis, is to keep the
cause for which we are fighting clearly before us, and this it has done
well; also, because we do not fight best in blinders, to tell us all
that can be known of the facts of the situation, and this it has done
not so well.
The power of the newspapers is that most people read them, and that many
people read nothing else.
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