account 30 of the work of the press correspondents in South Africa in influencing the public there and in England against the Boers; the editor of the Cape Times was also the special corre
spondent at Cape Town of two important London dailies , while “ the editors of the leading Johannesburg journals had been specially imported from England ” to carry out the policy of Mr.
Rhodes. The result, Sir William wrote a high government official, washis conviction that “ the small and noisy group ofmen who had got all the telegraphic and most of the press power into their hands are steadily intent upon the production of friction , and nothing but friction , in this country .” Heagain writes, under date of May 3 , 1899: “ We are getting our South African news
from London as we get much of ourmeat and all our drink from it. But there is a difference between the mental and bodily sustenance thus received . The news is first made up here by the syndicate for the transmission of false information , which has such enormous resources at its disposal, and is then cabled to London to produce alarm on the Stock Exchange or unrest in the
Cabinet. Here nothing is known about this alarming state of things, and in Johannesburg it is even less apparent. Our Johan nesburg has more prosperity in it . . . than any place in the
world . . . . But your London Johannesburg is quite another place . ” 31
Even lords of high degree have not scrupled to write as did Sir A . Henry Layard of his success in securing the support of the English and European press for Sir Stratford Canning in his policy as the ambassador of Great Britain at Constantinople .
“ For sometime I had under my control,” he writes , " the Con stantinople correspondence of the most influential journals in
England and on the Continent. I succeeded at the same time in obtaining a small subsidy for the Malta Times — a newspaper published in the island and conducted with some ability, and
which was then widely circulated in the Levant. ” “ I learnt by experience,” he continues, " how much the success and
reputation of a diplomatistmay depend upon his skill in obtain 30 Autobiography, pp. 376 - 455. 31 Autobiography, pp. 424 - 425.
There must be put with this, “ Editor of the Cape Times,” Edmund Garrettby E . T . Cook, chap . VII.
