The reader will find, on page four of this edition, a statement from the Proprietor of this newspaper on the matter of order and public health. The reader is entitled to know, before reading it, that the Herald reports on the same matter in its news columns, and that the independence of those columns from the desk of the Proprietor is a question the Herald takes seriously — though, as every honest editor must admit, not always easily.

It has been the practice of this newspaper, since its founding in 1882, to print the statements of its Proprietor as statements of its Proprietor, clearly so marked, and to let the news columns do their own work under their own signatures. Today's edition observes that practice. The Proprietor's statement is a statement; the news is the news.

The substance of what Don Cordoba writes is not, in this instance, a substance the Herald disputes. That the Ministry must act, that protocols must be clear and enforced, that panic and paralysis are equally costly — these are propositions on which reasonable men of every persuasion now agree. The reader may, on this occasion, take the Proprietor's statement as a statement and proceed to the reporting without the usual headache.

It has been a long week, and the gout is bad in spring. The paper carries on.