For my sins I am condemned to read several papers every day. During the strike my normal supply of reading was cut off, and the only news beyond the usual crop of rumours was that sent out by the British Broadcasting Company and the strike items contained in the various news sheets.

As the strike and its effects constituted the one important topic of news, to the exclusion of the doings of the various notorious personages of no interest, it is probable that the strike news sheets came nearer than Fleet Street would care to admit to fulfilling the true function of a newspaper. When read in conjunction with the official ‘correctives’ and a due allowance for what could be found between the lines, a very fair estimate of the day’s news was available.

On the Tuesday after the settlement, one of my papers joyfully announced that it was able to supply ‘all the world’s news again’ ; on Wednesday another paper reflected that the strike had provided a lesson in ‘what can be done without at a pinch,’ and, remembering that for the period of the strike we had been without any of the usual scandal, crime, divorce, film-star vagaries, fashionable news and eccentricities of the dull people who seek publicity on the back pages, many people will agree.

Now that the newspapers block the letter-box and litter the mat once again, we are expected to rejoice that the indispensable daily printed sheet is once more with us, yet it is difficult to conjure up enthusiasm when the average daily is subject to analysis.