But against the decline in the direct political influence of the Press there has to be set the growth of its influence over the community. The expansion both of circulations and of the field of interests catered for by the newspaper, already touched on in these pages, has helped immensely to develop the “newspaper habit.” It is a matter of elementary psychology that the average man and woman cannot help being influenced by the day-to-day exposition of political and other questions in the columns of their newspapers. Let any journal adopt the consistent policy of blackening the leaders of Soviet Russia or belauding Mussolini, and the infamy of the Bolsheviks or the disinterestedness and greatness of the Italian dictator becomes a creed to hundreds of thousands. Let the whole Press unite in the same shout, and that is the tendency under its present controllers, and the result is mass suggestion of a nature and intensity which causes the Press to mould the public opinion of whole nations. So that although an individual newspaper or a combination of newspapers may be powerless directly to affect the policy of a Cabinet, it is daily operating to sway the minds of the people and thus, indirectly, to sway Governments through the ultimate effect of mass suggestion in action during the period of a general election or a political crisis. And this is the work of a handful of men who――it is no reproach to them――are temperamentally unfitted for the enormous responsibilities which they have assumed so light-heartedly, so casually――as casually as though they were “cornering” chewing gum. Newspaper proprietors assert that in fact, their editors have a free hand, and attempt to prove this contention by pointing to differences in policy or treatment manifested by newspapers under the same control. One is at some difficulty in deciding whether this argument is the fruit of ingenious or of merely ingenuous minds. The _Evening Standard_, for instance, may not see eye to eye with the _Daily Express_ in such matters as the morality of modern dancing or the retention of old churches in the City of London, but a strike, a political crisis, a general election, the issue of war or peace, will witness a unanimity of editorial comment which goes beyond the limits of sheer coincidence. The _mot d’ordre_ has been given. The Press of to-morrow will have to regard wireless and the kinema as potential rivals. Both occupy a position analogous to the newspaper, inasmuch as their popularity is largely due to the lack of mental resources in the average man and woman, and their active disinclination to read anything calling for concentration or sustained effort. The Popular Press, Broadcasting and the “Movies” are alike variants of the “Daily Dope.” Furthermore, the Press has itself largely helped to popularise its potential competitors through the immense publicity which it accords them.