Selwyn House School - Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

Page 11 text:

FOR THE SCHOOL YE.-KR 1935-1936 are few, if any, big headlines, but in one section we read that some deaf and dumb people have clubbed together and bought a tank for the army, in another we see that some girls have qualified in a machine shop to supervise the automatic lathe, in others we see that new municipal sand-piles are going up for children, that the Russian women parachutists have been achieving great things, that a reward has been offered for the best architectural design for some new building. Each of these newspapers reflects a different civilization. In the former the unpleasant aspect of a too free country, and in the latter, the smooth and pleas- ing surface that cleverly conceals the steel shackles of a censored press, a press that shouts freedom and liberty to a people that are ensnared in a closer prison than ever the middle ages boasted, whose hands and feet are bound and whose children do not belong to the mothers but to the country itself, and to whom religion is denied. There is another thought which ought not to be overlooked, and that is the subject of advertising. In any local newspaper one would find these advertisements as the most common: Sure cure for bald-headed meng rub salve into pores three times a day , or Lose ten pounds a week, no tiresome dietg just take one good dose after each meal, and watch the fat melt Everybody knows it won't, but they buy it and use it three times a day. The 11df.'e1'li.vi11g !Zg'E?1t'iF.V rezzliv 01621 the AlU'6.f.V, and someone, somewhere, should interfere, a stronger powerg but is there any power as strong F We need only turn back the pages of history, back to the so-called dark ages, and note the conditions throughout Europe in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Practically speaking there was no art or literature. The ignorance of the masses was so profound that it threw its shadow across all the aspects of life. Their religion was steeped in superstition, and what knowledge they had was only such as was handed down by word of mouth from father to son. Then suddenly out of the sombre and ignorant background, a young printer named Gutenberg, a native of Germany, gave the world its first printing press. And in H55 the first books were published by this press. Previous to this time the monks were the sole tutors of Europe, but with the in- venting of the printing press, and the spreading of printed books and pamphlets throughout the continent, two great movements were set afoot, namelyf the Rqformtztion and the Rfzztziufzrzre. These have had unimagined, unlimited influences on the entire civilization of the world up to the present day. In a word, the irzzwztiorz of the printing prime, the mother of our modern newspaper, fjfrd Europe out of the dark agar. Books made men think- made them rub their eyes, and dimly feel the loveliness of Greek and Roman art, and of literature. It is a long reach downward from this lofty classic height to our news press of today, yet it is the direct descendant. .-Xnd though it is so full of ugliness and weakness, yet it has strength and beauty, for it is Life. It records the ebb and How of the tides of human progress, the incredible meanness of man, and his magnificent courage, the golden thread of Ideals, the sordid dross of Lifeg Inventions, Art, Music, hatreds, losses, and loves. - In short, Netc.r- Knowledge .' And so, it is good. Without it we would once more be steeped in Ignorance. And Ignorance, as Confucius put it, is Night without A141011 or Starr. W. H. fS.H.S. 1927-19351. l9l

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SELWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAGAZINE The jllflnhzrn Brass fDoes the Newspaper of today do more good than harm FJ fThe Angus Murray Prize for Ifnglish Literature, 19350 Yes! a thousand times. But had the proposition read simply, Does the news- paper of today do tremendous harm ? , the answer would still be, a thousand times, yes I The press is the voice of today, the herald of tomorrow. It tells the stories of peace and war alike. It is the tireless clarion of news. It is knowledge, light, and power, but above all, power. It is the record of all things mankind is accomplishing, or would accomplish. It is our limitless source of information f and of lies. It can stir the pulse of nations, make heroes of ordinary men, and soldiers die: or it can infiame a mob and lash it to brutality or revolution. It can arouse distrust and fear towards the heads of govern- ments, stir up strife among the labouring classes, impede the ways of-iustice and of com- merce, protect crime, defend law-breakers, and breed misery and unrest- all these for selfish reasons. Or it can inspire to deeds of nobility, or sacrifice, instil courageinto the lives of weary midnight toilers, and be the pioneer of freedom and of progress. In a word, it is kzzotcfedge, and therefore if ix power. For it is a truth that there is no limit to the harm which the press can achieve, nevertheless, even under the worst conditions, the conclusion remains unchanged, the press does more good than harm. In some countries such as Germany, Russia, and Italy,the press is controlled, and the people are told only what their leaders want them to hear. In other countries the press is free and the people are told what they themselves want to hear, as in some sections of the United States, and it has a tendency to cater to, and therefore encourage, the frivol- ous and trivial, or even the sordid and depraved side of human nature. But the weakness of the former system is beyond dispute. Where there is no freedom of the press, no truth can be possible, no confidence. There can be no natural vent to the feelings, no healthy interchange of ideas and ideals, no mutual knowledge of the temper of the people, no free- dom. Better a thousand times that the freedom of the press be zzbzzred, than that it should be .fII10ff1t'7't'I1l, robbing the nation of its liberty, and destroying initiative and progress. There are countless instances of the disastrous results of censorship of the press. The earliest one is notable. Not many years after printing was first introduced into England, the government became alarmed on account of the vast increase of knowledge and information at the disposal of the people. Therefore in 1530 it established a strict censorship of the press. This censorship lasted over a hundred and fifty years, and it was not until 169-I that the press was allowed to carry on where it had left off. Btfore this time printing almost be- came a lost art as the censorship was so strict. .-Ks an instance of the press giving the people what they want, one need only pick up one of the New York papers, such as the New York Daily News I-Iere, on the front page in big black headlines we read: til Giants lose to Dodgers. fiij YYoman Bandit holds up Three Men at Point of Gun. Ciiij Jazz King snubs one of N.Y's 400. Qivl Heiress to NYoolworth Millions starts Honeymoon with New husband: and so on. In sharp con- trast compare one ofthe Russian dailies, The Evening Moscow . In this paper there ISI

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