By what we can only consider a series of fortunate accidents, the press and the book world have provided and do provide a necessary organ in the modern world state, an organ for swift general information upon matters of fact and for the rapid promulgation and diffusion of ideas and interpretations. The newspaper grew, as we know, out of the news-letter which in a manuscript form existed before the Roman Empire; it owes its later developments largely to the advertisement possibilities that came with the expansion of the range of trading as the railways and suchlike means of communication developed. Modern newspapers have been described, not altogether inaptly, as sheets of advertisements with news and discussions printed on the back. The extension of book reading from a small class, chiefly of men, to the whole community has also been largely a response to new facilities; though it owes something also to the religious disputes of the last three centuries. The population of Europe, one may say with a certain truth, first learnt to read the Bible, and only afterwards to read books in general. A large proportion of the book publishing in the English language in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries still consisted of sermons and controversial theological works. Both newspaper and book production began in a small way as the enterprise of free individuals, without anyone realizing the dimensions to which the thing would grow. Our modern press and book trade, in spite of many efforts to centralize and control it, in spite of Defence of the Realm Acts and the like, is still the production of an unorganized multitude of persons. It is not centralized; it is not controlled. To this fact the nexus of print owes what is still its most valuable quality. Thoughts and ideas of the most varied and conflicting sort arise and are developed and worked out and fought out in this nexus, just as they do in a freely thinking vigorous mind. I am not, you will note, saying that this freedom is perfect or that the thought process of the print nexus could not go very much better than it does, but I am saying that it has a very considerable freedom and vigour and that so far as it has these qualities it is a very fine thing indeed. Now many people think that we are moving in the direction of world socialism to-day. Collectivism is perhaps a better, more definite word than socialism, and, so far as keeping the peace goes, and in matters of transport and communication, trade, currency, elementary education, the production and distribution of staples and the conservation of the natural resources of the world go, I believe that the world and the common sense of mankind move steadily towards a world collectivism. But the more co-operation we have in our common interests, the more necessary is it to guard very jealously the freedom of the mind, that is to say, the liberty of discussion and suggestion.