that every effort after secrecy is a symptom of decaying fitness. Possibly, indeed, it may be said that (for reasons indicated earlier in the chapter, or as a sequence to those reasons) Japan's relative failure against Russia at the last was partly due to the fact that its Government feared to take the nation into its confidence.
This however is carrying the argument farther than is necessary. The point is that every war should be an absolutely national affair, conducted by strong men who have forced their ways to the top in face of everything and who hold their positions by the confidence of the nation—a war of All for All. Press muzzling laws do not contemplate war on such lines, they contemplate wars conducted by a committee sitting in camera. If two nations otherwise equally fit come into conflict, surely the national determination to win will lie with those who are All for All. The men at home in England surely contributed to the victory of Trafalgar just as those in France contributed to its failure. So far as a muzzled or unmuzzled Press had to do with the course of events, it was Napoleon who best understood the art of muzzling the Press.
More than this it is difficult for one in the ranks of Journalism to say, lest he be suspected of special pleading. Yet no special pleading is intended or desired; the case resting rather on the fixed conviction, emphasised throughout this book and indeed its very raison d'étre and its main 'heresy' against conventionally
