It consoled him, later, that he was not the only victim. The Daily Dispatch became famous for its piquant interviews; especially with elderly celebrities of the masculine gender. He raised his eyes and fixed them on her with a pleading, dog-like look.!

“I had to see our solicitor one morning,” he explained, “when I was secretary to a miners’ union up north. A point had arisen concerning the legality of certain payments. It was a matter of vast importance to us; but he didn’t seem to be taking any interest, and suddenly he jumped up. ‘I’m sorry, Phillips,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a big trouble of my own on at home—I guess you know what—and I don’t seem to care a damn about yours. You’d better see Delauny, if you’re in a hurry.’ And I did.” “Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings. “And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.” “The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power,” answered Mrs. Denton. “It originated persecution and inflamed men’s passions against one another. It, too, preached war for its own ends, taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime. The Press of to-day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest. It aims at establishing the worst kind of tyranny: the tyranny over men’s minds. They pretend to fight among themselves, but it’s rapidly becoming a close corporation. The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be squeezed out. Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press. It will one day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan cardinals.”