Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/174

I have learnt one great lesson from his life and that of the Superintendent of the Ripon College, the late Amrita Chunder Ghose, and that is, that the one quality which, more than any other, ensures the success of an institution or of a business concern is absolute and unstinted devotion, combined with honesty and a moderate fund of common sense.

I was connected with journalism for over forty years, and I may say as the result of a somewhat long experience, that the success of a newspaper depends much more upon the manager than upon the editor. The personality of the editor counts for much; it is an asset that is not to be despised. But even more important to the newspaper is the efficiency of its management. Indeed, the two functions sometimes overlap; at any rate the editor and the manager must be in the closest correspondence and touch with one another. The editor must indeed guide and lead public opinion, though he cannot go violently against it and incur the risk of unpopularity, which would mean loss of subscribers, loss of advertisements and loss of revenue.

In my work as a journalist I tried to avoid sedition and libel and personal recriminations. I was never charged with sedition formally, or informally, though I fear some of my writings in the Bengalee were considered as making a very near approach to it; and when the question regarding my disqualification for election to the Imperial Legislative Council was under consideration by the Government of India, the files of the Bengalee were sent for in order to discover whether any allegation of sedition could be substantiated against me. I presume that it was found to be a hopeless task, and the files were sent back to the Imperial Library, from where they had been borrowed. I confess that I wrote strongly, very strongly when the necessities of the situation and the demands of public feeling required it—I confess that in the days of the anti- Partition controversy, when the public mind was thrown into a state of unusual excitement, by the adoption of a policy that no British Government had followed before, it was difficult to write with reserve or restraint.

Our rulers often complain of strong writing in the Press, but they sometimes conveniently forget the provocation that they give for such writing. As for libels, no newspaper writer can always avoid them. Sometimes in the public interest he has deliberately to take the risk of uttering libellous matter and to face the conse- quences. Sometimes it is a reporter who lets him down and he has