New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1912-06-16


room is found for dialectic. They have
been thought out beforehand. The ar
gument is concise, but none the less tell
ing. Their appeal is to the intelligence
Of men accustomed to handle affairs; to
whom time is money
Mr.. Massingham discusses in The
Matin" THE Genius Of the Daily Mall"
He looks at it with Radical eyes. How
can he help it, any more than I can
help looking at it with Conservative
eyes? He sees in Lord Northcliffe not
much more than a successful shopkeeper.
l see in him great journalist and
statesman. He applied" says Mr..
Massingham, the model of great shop
to the conduct of popular newspaper.
He called for customers" That
he had the organizing genius Of Mar
shall Field or a whitley is evident. The
point is what use he made OF It, and, to
my mind. he made a great use To be
of use he had to succeed. and not AL
his experiments in success were too deli
cate. But having created and built up
his paper and made it great power,
the use he made of it was imaginative
and beneficent. He has put himself and
his paper at the disposal of great ideas
and causes. Neither the ideas nor the
causes are Mr.. Massingham's, who
thinks Radically. Lord Northcliffe thinks
Imperially. He does plainly care not
for money, only or mainly but for power
and for such great public ends as power
can serve. At this moment, before the
ink is dry In the pen of his critic. he
opens his columns to "a discussion Of
Labor Unrest and how it should be
dealt with. He turns TO Mr. II. G. Wells.
do not think the choice altogether
happy one nor the remedies Mr.. wells
suggests curative. But the attempt Is
made, and II is something that the old
fashioned doctors on either side are not
called in, but new man.
My admiration for Lord Northcline IS,
for the most part, impersonal. My &C
quaintance with him is the acquaintance
of a single afternoon. He has house
in the country. known as Sutton Place
near Guildford. l motored there one
day with friends who knew him and we
had luncheon. After luncheon Lord
Northcliffe showed me the house. and
then we wandered about the park till
tea time. From beginning 10 end his
talk, his point of view. the bent of his
mind to great affairs and his way of
handling them had more OF the states
man than of the journalist. OF the COM
mercial Journalist there was little TO De
seen. II was the kind Of talk you would
have expected from a Cabinet Minister,
and would not always have got. The
manner simple. direct, sincere; the die
ton weighty; the thought original, in
dividual, farreaching, with a play or
mind in which Matthew Arnold himself
who invented that phrase, would have
rejoiced. It may be called by Radical
critics a matter of business that The
Daily Mail" has raised some S3OOVo
for the relief of the Titanic victims ap-
pealing exclusively to the women OF
England. Others will think Of 1t as an
intelligent impulse Of charity. in either
case II is evidence Of the power Of the
paper and of its hold on its readers; and
evidence of the number of its readers.
Sutton Place Is famous. 1t ranks. or
part Of 1t ranks, among the old houses
which have kept their identity through
centuries. You enter a quadrangle, or
what would be a quadrangle If one side
were not open, we'll proportioned, not too
large, not too high, with, the stamp of
distinction on il. The walls are covered
with yellowish brown and russell tiles,
and on one the date Of the building
1921, is cut deep. II has never been
touched, this quadrangle, through all
these years. all but 400 Of them. No
fact is more impressive than that. The
place belongs to a great Roman Catholic
family, the Salvins, of County Durham.
They at least have not, in Mr.. Lloyd
Georges elegant phrase, waxed fat on
sacrilege. They live in a house still
older than this, and one Of them when
asked why they never came to Sutton
Place answered. ut is too modern"
Lord Northcliffe has lease OF II. To
buy it would, 1 suppose, be impossible;
or would have been till the present
Chancellor Of the EXchequer set himself
TO tax landlords out of existence; in the
same spirit in which he is now conflscat-
ing the eadowments Of the Church In
Wales. Certain parts of the fabric Of
Sutton Place have been altered; other
parts have been restoredS and there has
been redecoration, with tapestries and
otherwise, all in a conservative spirit I
could see nowhere the touch Of any pro-
fame hand. When said 80 to Lord
Northcliffe he answered, Come and see
my bathroom" Except that 1t was In
silver and marble. 1t looked more like
the engine room Of an Atlantic liner
than like bathroom. When 1 sug-
gested that all these elaborate and COM
plicated fittings did not exactly seem to
be Of Henry Wits time he said. with
q laugh:
at is you Americans who are respon-
sible. The room is a copy OF one saw
in Pittsburgh"
A history Of Sutton Place has been
written by no less person than Mr..
Frederic Harrison. Lord Northcliffe
gave me a copy of the book: a souvenir
of delightful afternoon which I treas
ure. He has inscribed it with my name
and Souvenir of XVIth century visit"
and the date.
OF Lord Northclffe's connection with
1.-The Times" where he is supposed to
have a controlling financial influence.
will say at present but two things.