Gwent smiled a grim smile.

"Well, I come back to my former question"--he said--"Suppose the
occasion arose, and you did all this, what pleasure to yourself do
you foresee?"

"The pleasure of clearing the poor old earth of some of its
pestilential microbes!"--answered Seaton, "Something of the same
thankful satisfaction Sir Ronald Ross must have experienced when he
discovered the mosquito-breeders of yellow fever and malaria, and
caused them to be stamped out. The men who organise national
disputes are a sort of mosquito, infecting their fellow-creatures
with perverted mentality and disease,--they should be exterminated."

"Why not begin with the newspaper offices?" suggested Gwent--"The
purlieus of cheap journalism are the breeding-places of the human
malaria-mosquito."

"True! And it wouldn't be a bad idea to stamp them out," here Seaton
threw back his head with the challenging gesture which was
characteristic of his temperament--"But what is called 'the liberty
of the press'(it should be called 'the license of the press') is
more of an octopus than a mosquito. Cut off one tentacle, it grows
another. It's entirely octopus in character, too,--it only lives to
fill its stomach."

"Oh, come, come!" and Gwent's little steely eyes sparkled--"It's the
'safe-guard of nations' don't you know?--it stands for honest free
speech, truth, patriotism, justice--"