for a growing expression of the universal religious spirit, this collection of his writings is appreciatively inscribed."[1] This dedication expresses rarely well the intimate and cordial relationship between the editor and the community and the community reaching out through a large section of a great country, as it was exemplified in the work of this great editor.
The responsibility entailed by this identity of interest between editor and community may again be illustrated by the conception of it held by this same editor. It is seen in a letter of Harvey W. Scott to certain clergymen who had written him protesting that it was not the function of the editor of a secular newspaper to advocate or to attack the peculiar views of any church. The editor writes that he can not admit that it is not a proper province of a newspaper to touch a subject which some clergymen claim as their exclusive field, "more especially since, as a newspaper man, in active touch with the public mind during more than forty years, I have found no feature of The Oregonian's work more sought or approved than in the field from which you would bar it." . . . "The Oregonian is a newspaper whose function is discussion, as it thinks fit and deems just, of all subjects presented for consideration in the active life of our people even the claims of dogmatic theology, on occasion." . . . "As a general newspaper, taking note of the movement of the thought of the world, The Oregonian cannot ignore a subject which has so large a part of the progressive world's attention."[2]
It was Thomas Carlyle who felt that in England the responsibilities of the editor were equally serious. "The true Church of England at this moment," he says, "lies in the editors of its newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly, admonishing kings themselves,advising peace or war with an authority which only the first reformers, and a long-past class of popes were possessed of; inflicting moral censure, imparting moral encouragement, in all ways diligently administering the discipline of the
- ↑ Religion, Theology and Morals, by Harvey W. Scott. Forty Years Editor-in-Chief Morning Oregonian of Portland. Edited by Leslie M. Scott, 2 vols., 1917.
This relationship is also indicated in the Oregon Historical Society Quarterly, June, 1913,—a Harvey W. Scott memorial number.
- ↑ Religion, Theology and Morals, I, 91–94; II, Appendix, 349–350.
