In such matters, alas, change is very slow. The whole press of the United States, I believe, is moving in the direction of the _Nation_--that is, in the direction of independence and honesty. Even such papers as the New York _Herald-Tribune_ are measurably less stupid and intransigeant than they used to be, in their news if not in their opinions. But the majority of active journalists in the higher ranks were bred on the old-time party organs, and it is very difficult for them to reform their ways. They still think, not as free men, but as party hacks. On the one side they put the truth; on the other side they put what they call policy. Thus there are thousands of them who still sit down nightly to praise Coolidge--though to the best of my knowledge and belief there is not a single journalist in the whole United States who ever speaks of Coolidge in private without sneering at him. This resistance to change grows all the more curious when one observes what happens to the occasional paper which abandons it. I offer the Baltimore _Sunpaper_ as an example--an especially apposite one, for the influence of the _Nation_ upon it must be apparent to everyone familiar with its recent history. It was, a dozen years ago, a respectable but immensely dull journal. It presented the day’s news in a formal, unintelligent fashion. It was accurate in small things, and free from sensationalism, but it seldom if ever went beyond the overt event to the causes and motives behind it. Its editorial opinions were flabby, and without influence. To-day it is certainly something far different. It must still go a long, long way, I suspect, before it escapes its old self altogether, but that must be a dull reader, indeed, who cannot see how vastly it has improved. It no longer prints the news formally; it devotes immense energy to discovering and revealing what is behind the news. In opinion it has thrown off all chains of faction and party, and is sharply and often intelligently independent. Its reaction to a new public problem is not that of a party hack, but that of a free man. It is, perhaps, sometimes grossly wrong, but no sane person believes that it is ever deliberately disingenuous.