individualist rivals, has not simply set herself to buy and hold the
keys and axles of their economic machinery. She has set herself, it must
be admitted, with a certain crudity and little success, but with
unexampled vigour, to buy the minds of her adversaries. The Western
nations have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press; that is to
say, a Press that may be bought by anyone. Our Press is constantly
bought and sold, in gross and detail, by financiers, advertisers,
political parties, and the like. Germany came into the market rather
noisily, and great papers do to a large extent live in glass houses; but
her efforts have been sufficient to exercise the minds of great numbers
of men with the problem of what might have happened in the way of
national confusion if the German attack had been more subtly
conceived....

It is only a partial answer to this difficulty to say that a country
that is so nationalist and aggressive as Germany is incapable of subtle
conceptions. The fact remains that in Great Britain at the present time
there are newspaper proprietors who would be good bargains for Germany
at two million pounds a head, and that there was no effectual guarantee
in the individualistic system, but only our good luck and the natural
patriotism of the individuals concerned that she did not pick up these
bargains before trading with the enemy became illegal. It happened, for
example, that Lord Northcliffe was public-spirited, That was the good
luck of Great Britain rather than her merit. There was nothing in the
individualistic system to prevent Germany from buying up the entire
Harmsworth Press--_The Times, Daily Mail_, and all--five years before
the war, and using it to confuse the national mind, destroy the national
unity, sacrifice the national interests, and frustrate the national
will.