WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1928.
CHINESE ART
LITERATURE
FOLKLORE
THE CHINA MAIL,
A LONDON DAILY,
DEMISE OF “WESTMINSTER GAZETTE."
HOW STAFF. TOOK IT.
with energy and knowledge. It has become of less account to the staff than a felled ox in a slaughterhouse. The Street of Adye ture.
And there are the younger mon from the provinces, thrilled with their early experiences on a Lon- don daily, their faces, set aquare to a journalist's career. Three of them, feeling stability and At 4.30, by arrangement, the hope, have just married. One whole of the editorial staff on returned from a honeymoon duty reporters, sub-editors, to find his new home lender-writers, reviewers, picture burgled and his wedding presents department, library, and refer-stolen-and now this! Another, ence-room-crowd into the rea lover of Hardy's books, who got porters' room to hear a statement his first real chance when he was
CUSTOMS with a copy of the "Daily from the Managing Editor. He, sent down to Dorchester to
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an understanding and sympathe tie man, stands before his 50 or more staunch workers, and quiet- lys bitterly, confirms the news. He was under solemn promise not to divulge it for another hour, for a very real reason which con- corns circulation in relation to rival newspapers.
"cover" the novelist's death, and did splendid work on it, comes up to me quietly with signed and completed enlistment forms for the Royal Air Force, and says: "Queer, isn't it? But I filled in these papers when things looked so uncertain, over a year ago. Looks as if they'll come in handy yet,
Busy Machines, Empty Desks.
Officially, the old "Westminster Gazette". "died on Wednesday morning, February 8, when its astonished readers were present News," of which it had become part. So far as the staff were concerned, it died somewhere be tween three and four-thirty, the previous afternoon, when a bomb shell fizzled and then explodert with a devastating, suddenness which paralysed all work and left a few hundred workers, in Shoc- lane agape. In so short a time a
"You can imagine how I have
Apart from the editorial side, big and complex organisation for felt these past few days," he broadcasting the world's news
says, "knowing what I have there are the circulation, adver- compositors, process, from all quarters of the globe be-known and being unable to divulge tising, came little more than
it to you." He speaks of the foundry, machine-room hands- and an epitaph. How did it all splendid loyalty of his staff. He perhaps around 400, mostly with happen, to those to whom it was mentions the names of a mere specialised jobs, flung on to the trade, profession, and livelihood? handful who are invited to go. street at one time,
Round about three a reporter over to the amalgamating paper. came back from a Liberal lun- For the rest, inevitably and re- cheon, at which a speaker, quali- gretfully, there are very liberal fied to speak with authority, had notices, either according to con as the saying goes, "blown the tract or in excess of it. All that gafT." When he came in with the remains is "Good luck" and news his colleagues, busy on their
"Good-bye." "stories," said: "Yes, tell us an-
The Personal Side. other; we seem to have heard One has to know the splendid things like that before." The re- camaraderie and corporate spirit porter persisted that there could which infuses a newspaper staff be no doubt. He reported to his over a series of years to realise News Editor, who knew nothing, what a blow like, that means. To Calmly, as though he were re- few occupations in life does porting a political speech instead man give so much of himself for of a calamity which deprived so impermanent a reward. A him of his job, he sat down to his head of a business builds up a typewriter, and began: "At a property and retires on it in the Liberal luncheon at to-day, fullness of his years; à journal Mr. So-and-so said "and ist, with few exceptions, retires duly handed round a finished from his, in a vastly different document among his no longer in-sense, when his, work can be bet-the last "Westminster Gazette," credulous colleagues, writes one ter done by the younger men. in which every colleague has auto- of them in the "Observer." He has given his all and kept, as graphed his "story." What else alms for oblivion-his savings, if any. He passes on.
Within an hour or so of the bombshell the editorial rooms are practically deserted, with half- finished "stories" sticking out of typewriters and stacks of "copy lying about tables discarded- the last and loneliest "over- matter" of the old "Westminster Gazette." My final impression that evening is of the quiet-man- nered night editor and the drama- tic critic chatting together in a sort of uncanny vacuum where normally all would be stir and bustle, and of the tape and Creed machines by, the subs' room tick- ing and tapping relentlessly on with no one to tear avidly at their news. Most of the "boys" are elsewhere, holding copies of
should they do when something which was breath and life to them is dead? Pride of paper to these men is like pride of regi- ment to a Guards' officer. The Street of Adventure has felt the shock of another, but worse, "Tribune" disaster; a fighting unit has disbanded.
"Everything's Off.” Rumour courses through every And so one looks round at one's room like a forest fire. Every colleagues and sees the Dead Sea where there are informal confer fruit which is the harvest of their ences. The News Editor, who has labours. One or two were al gone post-huste to the, Managing ready old "Westminster" men Editor, returns to the reporters' before it changed from an even: room, bends over a man who has ing to a morning dally over six just been ordered to Scotland by years ago. Others have worked
Above all, there is the crown- the night train for Earl Haig's for it two, four, six years, slaved ing irony that men whose profes- funeral and drawn substantial ex-on late stories in the early hours, sional passion is news-spotting penses in advance, and says: with no thought of food or rest, and news-getting for others "Drop that story you're doing, so that their paper should not be should be taken unaware by the laddie, and don't worry about "left." Some are at the zenith one news-story most vital to Scotland. It's off. Everything's of their powers, doing personal themselves. off." The paper, as a paper, is and distinctive work, after years dead. Half an hour ago it was, a of drudgery and disappointment, Mr. Chang Ching-kiang, mem- living, striving entity, with which it is the ambition of everyber of the Nationalist Government, human brain and blood feeding it | journalist to do.
has left Shanghai for Nanking.
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