(i)
How Free is the Press
That without a free press there can be no free people is a things that all free people take for granted, we need not discuss it. Nor will we at this moment discuss the restrictions placed upon the press in time of war. At such Times all liberties have to be restricted, free people must see to it that when peace comes full freedom is restored in the meantime, it may Be wholesome to consider what that freedom is, and how far it is truly destraple. It may turn out to be no freedom at all, or even a more freedom to tyrannies, for tyranny is fact, the uncontrolled freedom of one man, or one gang, to impose its will on the world. When we speak of the freedom of the press, we usually means freedom in a very technical and restricted sense-namely, Freedom from direction or censorship by the government. In this respect, the British press is under ordinary conditions. Singularly free. It can attack the policy and political character of minister interfere in the delicate machinery of foreign conduct campaigns to subject foreign diplomacy, the constitution incite citizens to discontent and rebellion, expose scandals and foment grievance, and generally harry and behaviour the servants of the state. With almost perfect liberty on occasion, it can become a weapon to coerce the government to conform to what it asserts to be the will of the people.
So far, this is all to the good. Occasionally, this freedom may. Produce disastrous hesitations and inconsistencies in public policy, or tend to hamper the suit execution of emergency measures, but generally speaking it works to secure and sustain that central doctive of Democracy as we understand it-that the state is not the master but the servant of the people.
The press as a whole, and in technical and restrict sense, is thus pretty free in a peaceful Britain. There is no shade of political opinion that does not some how contrive to express itself. But if we go on to imagine that any particular organ of the press enjoys the larger liberty of being a forum of public opinion, we are gravely mistaken. Every Newspaper is shacked to its own set of overloads and in its turn, like the unmerciful servant, exercise a power full bondage upon its readers and one the public generally indeed we may say that the heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the press but the unofficial censorship by a press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.
(ii)
The Earth
All that the Johnson had was the earth-very often it seemed as if it were all they had ever had.
It was true that they also had possessions-a plough, a two-wheeled cart, tools, a bony brown mare which slowly dragged the plough and the cart about their rough four-acre plot-but without the earth these things were useless. It was true that they also had a son.
It was more than thirty years since the Johnsons, realising that he was not quite like others, had taken Benjy to a Doctor. This doctor had persuaded them that he needed interests that would strengthen his mind. It would be good if they gave him something to do, some occupation, which would help his development. It would help a great deal if they gave him a special interest to feed him sense of responsibility, you are people on the land, the doctor said, let him keep hens.
So for many years Benjy had kept hens, and what the earth was to him mother and father the hens were to Benjy they were almost all he had. When he came from school, cut off by his simplicity from other children, Benjy went straight home to his hens, which He kept in a wire coop that his father had made at the back of the house. At first he kept Ten or a dozen hens, all colours and breeds, brown and specked and black and white, and the coop was small. He fed the hens simply, on scraps from the table, seeded cabbages strung from the write, a little maize, and on corn-ears which be gleand in the late summer from his father a core of stubble. It is possible that a hen, being a simple creature thrives best on simple treatment. Benjy understood the First and last thing about a hen. That it exists for nor had it become highly complicated and commercialized. Eggs were cheap, hens mysteriously pecked Nourishment off the bore earth. They sat in a home-made Nesting-box, on straw, and Laid the eggs expected of then.
(iii)
India Through a Traveller's Eyes
India had always been part of the background of my life, but I had never seen it whole and for myself until new. Yet the stories that our Indian family doctor and his wife told me when I was child had woven themselves into my growing dreams, and I had long read everything that I could find about that country-from my father I had learned of it through Buddhism and the life history of the Lord Buddha. What did I go to India to see? Not the Taj Mahal, although I did see it and by moonlight, not Fatehpur Sikri, although I did see it, and not the glories of empire in New Delhi, although I did see them. I want to India to see and listen to two groups of people, the young intellectuals in the cities and the peasants in the villages. These I met in little rooms in the city, in little houses in the villages, and I heard their plans for freedom. Already the intellectuals believed that another world war was inevitable. They had been bitterly disappointed after the first world war be what they felt were the broken promises of England. The English, they declared, had no real purpose to restore India to the people. I could believe it fresh as I was from China. Where the period of people's Tutelage seemed endless and self government further off every year. When you are ready for independence, conquerors have always said to their subjects, etcetera!
But who is to decide when that moment comes and how can people learn to govern themselves except by doing it?
So the intellectuals in India were Restless and embittered, and I sat though hours watching their plashing dark eyes and.
