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The Psychology of Jingoism

cablegrams brings with it some grave dangers. I cannot help feeling the force of some words of Lowell, written many years ago, on this subject: –

[The telegraph], by making public opinion simultaneous, is also making it liable to those delusions, panics, and gregarious impulses which transform otherwise reasonable men into a mob.'

The mischief is much accentuated where, as in Australia, the metropolitan cities are so large in proportion to the population of each colony, and the metropolitan papers are so weighty in influence and so widely circulated. I have just cut to-day, from a daily paper, the enclosed cablegram. It is just of a kind to inflame the sentiments of Irish Catholics, who, but for the cablegrams, would be inclined to suspect the British conduct in forcing the war.

The 'enclosed cablegram' reads as follows: –

Boer Desecration and Burning of Churches.

The Boers in Northern Natal, before evacuating Newcastle and Dundee, defiled and desecrated the Catholic churches in those towns, and finally set fire to the buildings.

It only remains to add that the cabled statement is absolutely destitute of truth, the product of some lie factory in London or Melbourne.

The 'freedom of the press' in New Zealand may be gauged from the case of Mr. Grattan Grey. This gentleman was appointed leader of the official reporting staff in the New Zealand legislature, receiving a lower salary than his

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