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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 10 (February 1, 1930)

Trusted and Perhaps “Busted.”

page 12

Trusted and Perhaps “Busted.”

If the Roman Empire had had a daily newspaper press, therein would the historians have looked for the seeds, signs, and evolution of the decline and fall. So one can imagine a future Gibbon examining with particular care the daily and periodical publications of the English-speaking world from Addison and Steele to date. And nowhere would he find a greater change than in the daily press of the Twentieth Century, once trusted, now Trusted. But publicity chains have had a bump on the London Stock Exchange through the failure of the Inveresk paper group to fulfil the financial expectations formed by shareholders concerning this linking-up. The group is both provincial and metropolitan in character, and the journalistic Napoleon in this case is an Inveresk lawyer, who has now resigned his chairmanship. The cablegram (19th December), containing this information regards the Inveresk set-back as “a city sensation of the first magnitude”; the shares were 13/9 on that date, and earlier in the year had touched 67/6. Preference dividends are postponed. Naturally, considerable noise is created by any failure to keep trust with preference shareholders whose capital (at 7 or 8 or 9 per cent.), enables these combines to be brought off.
The Fine New Waterfront Rail Approach To Auckland. The Westfield deviation, over which goods trains are now running daily in and out of Auckland.

The Fine New Waterfront Rail Approach To Auckland.
The Westfield deviation, over which goods trains are now running daily in and out of Auckland.

But the larger question is whether journalism in general is keeping trust with the public as a whole. On that point no stock exchange verdict is obtainable, and a Gibbon judgment may arrive rather late. In the British periodical world the Edinburgh Review, famous for the writings of many classics from Lamb to Macaulay and Matthew Arnold, has recently died. The “Morning Post,” subject of Macaulay's invective, survives on the rock of Toryism, oldest of London's newspapers, dating from 1772. When the Nineteenth Century was born the poet Coleridge was lifting a decadent “Morning Post” to high eminence by his writings. “Mr. Coleridge's essays in the ‘Morning Post’,” said Fox, in the House of Commons, “led to the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens.” Where is the Twentieth Century Coleridge? What is his place in up-to-the-minute daily journalism? Has he a place?

* * *

No account, however brief, of recent world events should conclude without a tribute to airman Chichester, “the amateur of aeronautics,” for his untrumpeted solo flight, across Europe, Africa and Asia, from England to Australia. Considering the capacity of the machine and the flying experience of its owner, this New Zealander has put up a new record in performance, if not in hours and minutes.