But if legislation and public opinion be powerless to check the growth of Combines, the more intelligent section of the public, aided by those few influential journals that have still eluded the tentacles of the Octopus, is at last disturbed in its mind. Trustification of the Press has come to be regarded as a public danger, and as of still worse omen for the future. It is conceived of as a menace by the politician――always hostile to and ready to impute sinister motives to any journal which fails to praise him――who visualises the possibilities of all the battalions of the Press Czars suddenly being arrayed against his party. Its dangers have been perceived by the commercial community. Any Government which fails to reckon with the sudden conversion of a Press, yesterday friendly but mobilised against it to-day as the result of overnight change of ownership, personal spite, or thwarted ambition, is singularly unfit to govern, even in an age of incapable and hand-to-mouth administrations. The malady has thus at least been diagnosed. But the patient is not easily curable. The Combines can be challenged only by comparable weight of metal, and they are entrenched too firmly to render attractive any attempt at competition. It almost seems, therefore, as though the community must resign itself to Stentor, with his vulgarities, his inanities, his subservience to the whims and interests of his owners, and his greed for profits and yet more profits. Given, however, a sufficiently aroused degree of public opinion――and here we are dealing with the incalculable and the unpredictable――and a remedy is not entirely lacking. One of the most characteristic and creditable features of the history of the Press is the great influence that has been exercised in the past by organs of small or relatively small circulation and revenue, daily, weekly, and monthly. Some of these still exist, and although both their influence and their independence have largely departed, they yet stand as sign-posts on the road to defeating the complete monopoly of the Trust Press. Courage and public spirit are admittedly required for a revival of independence in journalism, but the prospect is not without its promise of reasonable financial gain in addition to that of less tangible rewards. Intelligent men and women are daily becoming more disgusted with a Press that sets sensation before truth and has raised vulgarity to the level of an exact science. Even if the Dictators should realise the existence of this attitude――and they have no criteria beyond circulation and revenue――they would be unable to meet it. You can do many things to and with a newspaper, but you cannot change its spirit overnight with the same ease as one of our most widely-circulated journals once swung round in twenty-four hours from the advocacy of a Protective tariff to the championship of Free Trade because its earlier attitude was considered to be unpopular among its patrons.