Editorial November 5, 1910 Issue

AN IMPORTANT DUTY

Archibald McLellan

When it was first announced in these columns that the scope and influence of the Christian Science periodicals were to be enlarged and broadened by the issuance of a daily newspaper, the question was frequently asked as to why this was necessary—were there not already newspapers enough in the world?

This question Mrs. Eddy answered once for all when, at the head of the editorial page in the initial number of The Christian Science Monitor, she definitely set forth its unique object namely, "To injure no man, but to bless all mankind." Other papers there were, but none so world-wide in its purpose,—a newspaper not for Christian Scientists alone, but for every advocate of clean journalism, whatever his religious or political proclivity; and it was because Mrs. Eddy realized the great possibilities of clean journalism, and the influence such a paper as she had planned would have upon this and future generations, that she gave directions for the establishment of the Monitor.

Until this paper was issued, the belief prevailed in many an otherwise strictly guarded home, that no matter how instrinsically bad a daily newspaper might be in its sensational reports of crime and scandal, it could safely be read by the man of the family; that the wife and mother might read portions of it with some measure of propriety, but to the children it must be as a closed book. Gradually, since the reading public has become acquainted with the Monitor, there has dawned upon a great many people the truth that even the man of the family, saint or sinner as he may be, cannot handle "the unclean thing' without defilement, and that the sensational exploitation of what is wrong and vicious in human affairs cannot be otherwise than degrading in its tendencies and harmful to all who come within its influence.

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