"Good God!" burst out Seaton, impatiently--"When it does, then the
'new world' about which men talk so much may get a beginning!
'Honest free speech--truth!' Why, modern journalism is one GREAT LIE
advertised on hoardings from one end of the world to the other!"

"I agree!" said Gwent--"And there you have the root and cause of
war! No need to exterminate nations with your destructive stuff,--
you should get at the microbes who undermine the nations first. When
you can do THAT, you will destroy the guilty and spare the
innocent,--whereas your plan of withering a nation into a dust-heap
involves the innocent along with the guilty."

"War does that,"--said Seaton, curtly.

"It does. And your aim is to do away with all chance or possibility
of war for ever. Good! But you need to attack the actual root of the
evil."

Seaton's brow clouded into a frown.

"You're a careful man, Gwent,"--he said--"And, in the main, you are
right. I know as well as you do that the license of the press is the
devil's finger in the caldron of affairs, stirring up strife between
nations that would probably be excellent friends and allies, if it
were not for this 'licensed' mischief. But so long as the mob read
the lies, so long will the liars flourish. And my argument is that
if any two peoples are so brainless as to be led into war by their
press, they are not fit to live--no more fit than the mosquitoes
that once made Panama a graveyard."