Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/559



is far beyond all that could have been anticipated when the

presses close, the papers have passed into the hands of their readers, and have then been cast aside as having served their purpose. The suggestions that have been made of its ultimate value to the historian through the infinite range of reconstruc

tions of past time made possible by the press have presupposed a press under normal conditions. A press regulated or censored by authority, a press under governmental control, a press used by governments to promulgate its special doctrines is not a free press, and a society reconstructed from a press thus limited by external conditions is but a caricature of what should be a normal society. For this study of normal life the newspaper, - abnormal as it itself may seem

with flaring headlines and blurred pages of

illustrated advertisements, with all of its limitations, its inac curacies, its unworthy representatives , its lack of proportion , its many temptations not always resisted — to throw prismatic colors instead of the white light of truth on its accounts of the

day, the periodical press still remains the most important single source the historian has at his command for the reconstruction of the life of the past three centuries.

APPENDIX I

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES * NAME

BORN

DIED

OCCUPATION

A 'BECKETT, A. W. ABERDEEN, G. H. GORDON, Earl of ACTON , Sir J. E ., first Baron ADAM, H. Pearl (Mrs. George)

1844 1909 humorist 1784 1860 statesman 1834 1902 historian 1882 journalist

ADAM, Juliette

ADAMS, F. P.

1836 1868

ADAMS, Henry

1838

ADAMS, S. H.

1871

ADAMSON, Robert

1871 editor, writer 1837 1908 author, journalist 1836 1907 author, editor 1876 university professor 1758 1808 statesman 1874 author and special corre

ALDEN, W. L. ALDRICH, T. B. AMBLER, C. H.

AMES, Fisher ANGELL, Norman

editor

1918

columnist historian author

spondent

ARCHER, William ARNOLD, Matthew ARNOLD, Thomas