Five weeks before the armistice in November 1918 an unprecedented thing happened in Britain. The control of a modern popular newspaper passed from private ownership into the hands of the prime minister of the day. Ever since David Lloyd George assumed the premiership twenty-two months earlier there were signs aplenty that relations between Downing Street and Fleet Street had entered a new era. But the sale of the Daily Chronicle to agents of the head of the government went far beyond custom or precedent. Lloyd George's immediate predecessors had remained old-fashioned even in the face of the press revolution wrought by the likes of Sir George Newnes and Alfred Harmsworth (immortalized as Lord Northcliffe). The phenomenon of mass-circulation newspapers had little appeal to great aristocrats like Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery, who were very selective in their dealings with Fleet Street. Likewise Herbert Henry Asquith scarcely troubled to hide his Balliol-bred contempt, ever preferring quality journalism to quantity, while Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman seems not to have exerted himself unduly to cultivate and exploit the good will of editors and proprietors.

中文翻译：

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1918 年劳合·乔治收购《每日纪事报》

1918 年 11 月停战前五周，英国发生了一件史无前例的事情。现代大众报纸的控制权从私有制转移到了当时的总理手中。自从大卫·劳合·乔治二十二个月前就任首相以来，有大量迹象表明唐宁街和舰队街之间的关系进入了一个新时代。但出售的每日纪事对政府首脑代理人的要求远远超出了惯例或先例。即使面对乔治·纽恩斯爵士和阿尔弗雷德·哈姆斯沃斯（被称为不朽的诺斯克利夫勋爵）等人引发的新闻革命，劳合·乔治的前任仍然保持守旧。报纸大量发行的现象对索尔兹伯里勋爵和罗斯伯里勋爵这样的大贵族没有什么吸引力，他们在与舰队街打交道时非常有选择性。同样，赫伯特·亨利·阿斯奎斯（Herbert Henry Asquith）几乎毫不费力地掩饰他在贝利奥尔（Balliol）产生的蔑视，他更喜欢新闻质量而不是数量，而亨利·坎贝尔-班纳曼爵士（Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman）似乎并没有过度努力培养和利用编辑和所有者的善意。