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The Psychology of Jingoism

holders in the Chartered Company, and that paper received its South African intelligence from the same sources as the rest of the great London newspapers, such influences are, of course, not essential to explain the Jingoism of the cheap sensational press in any country.

In order to get an effective mastery of the press, it is only necessary for the operators to purchase or control a certain number of influential papers, which shall be used to mark a path of sensational policy and set the pace; the self-interest of yellow journalism will do the rest.

It will be objected that too great an influence is here imputed to the South African press. 'Surely,' it will be said, 'the facts and opinions thus communicated are corroborated from countless private sources of information. These are not the views of a few newspapers only; the unanimous testimony of British South Africa endorses them.' And this is true.

But what is the essential worth of these feelings of British South Africans and of the 'facts' by which they support them? Race feeling, since the Raid, has been terribly embittered, the minds of British and Dutch alike have been kept in a constant strain of hostile receptivity, drinking in each idle story which