Editors and Leading Articles, 53 least one organ of the Anti-Corn Law League. The truth is, that the public is interested to see the attitude of a newspaper on the speeches or facts recorded in its col- umns, and there is no doubt that the perusal and criticism of the articles is one of the great' pleasures of newspaper reading. One important question remains. Should newspaper articles be anonymous or signed ? This is undoubtedly more a writer's than a reader's question. It is one which concerns the journalist more than the public. Without going into the arguments for and against anonymity, it may be stated that the majority of eminent journalists are, for practical reasons, against signed articles, and probably the great body of pressmen would endorse the views of Mr Edward R. Russell, of Liverpool, quoted in the New Review, He holds that the signing of arti- cles would develop rather than repress the egotism of the staff. A newspaper, he says, should have an individuality, a " record," a continuity, a policy, and even a manner, independent of xh&per- son?tel, and it should be the business of the editor to keep these up. In the leading columns, writers should have no personal equation to consider. They would not — or should not — ^accept the task of wri- ting articles contrary to their serious convictions. But if they do write leaders, they should have nothing to think of but their subject, their instructions, and the recognized policy of the paper. And any good editor will so revise his writers' articles that any obtrusion of themselves upon the scene may be retrenched. Though leading articles have occasionally been re-pub- lished in a permanent form, they are, generally speaking, distinctly not literature, and have but an ephemeral value. It could, indeed, hardly be otherwise. The journalist is called upon to furnish the public with a vigorous off-hand expression of opinion about the subject of the hour as it presents itself at the moment of writing. A clear, frank, and rapid declaration of the views of the paper is expected from him ; he emphatically wields the pen of a " ready writer," and a completed article is looked for from him in
