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Two men dined alone that night in a private room of the House of Commons and talked of the future of Europe. They had scarcely an idea in common or a subject upon which they were agreed. Warren Rand, before the first course was removed, was speculating as to how a man with so little personality and such a limited field of ideas could possibly have become the premier of a great country, whilst the Right Honourable Oliver Trowse who, for the last two years, had filled that somewhat thankless position, was asking himself in almost bewildered fashion why his private secretary, whom he trusted implicitly, should have spoken of this blunt-mannered, unattractive man as one of the vital forces of the universe. Anyhow, whilst he was at it, Trowse made up his mind to solve the riddle of his visitor’s reputation so far as he could.

“They tell me, Mr. Rand,” he said, “that during the last eighteen months, you have become the largest newspaper owner of this or any other generation.”

“It is probably true,” Rand acknowledged.

“One asks oneself,” the Premier went on, sipping his first glass of champagne, “whether your activities in that direction have been entirely financial, or whether, as I have heard it once or twice vaguely suggested, you have some great purpose in your mind which you have not yet fully explained to the world.”

“There is no need for me to have any other purpose,” Warren Rand declared, with that crudeness of which his host had already taken note. “I only buy money-making newspapers, because if a paper isn’t a money-maker it isn’t getting its circulation, and circulation is the one thing I insist upon. I figure there are some fifty million people in the United States and England, and scattered over the Continent, to say nothing of the British colonies, who every day read what we have to say to them.”

The Prime Minister nodded thoughtfully.

“Very interesting,” he murmured—“very interesting indeed. As a purely academic question, let me ask you this? How do you suppose the power of the Press compares with, say, the spoken word, or the broadcasting, or any of these other means of attracting public attention?”

Warren Rand had rather the air of a head master from a great public school asked to lecture to a kindergarten.

“I will tell you, Mr. Trowse,” he expounded, “why the Press possesses a power which is inevitable, unbounded, and undefeatable. It gains that power from one quality—repetition. The laws of the physical world would, any one of them, afford the best simile: the falling drops of water which wear their way through the stone; the avalanche crushing the earth underneath, inch by inch, till the final movement comes; the force of gravitation, drawing to itself, year by year, the buildings men have erected upon earth’s surface.... You follow me, I hope? You can inculcate a doctrine with the living voice to any man you can get to listen to you, and he’ll go away and forget it. You can preach the same doctrine at him day by day, week by week, and year by year, until it becomes part of his life, until he believes it because he has to believe it. He has to read his newspaper more or less conscientiously. He can’t spend all his time with the serial, the money market, and the sporting news. Before he throws it away, he has to read the leader, and he has to read of the world’s affairs from the point of view of the man or group of men who wrote that leader. You form a man’s mind through his newspaper, just as you form a boy’s in school. Nothing else has the same quality of inevitability. That is why the man who owns the Press of the world rules the world.”

“No one,” the Premier acknowledged, “owes more to the Press than I do, or has a greater appreciation of it as a force in life, but I think you’re exaggerating. Quite natural, too, considering the position you occupy in the newspaper world.”

Warren Rand did not trouble to argue the matter. He emptied his glass and watched it being refilled. He still had the air of one who is talking without much hope of being understood.

“It might seem so,” he admitted tolerantly; “yes, it might certainly seem so.”

Oliver Trowse ventured down one of the byways of thought suggested by his companion’s speech.

“Do you believe,” he asked him, “that if you bought a Republican newspaper you could turn its readers into Democrats?”

“Of course you could, in time,” Warren Rand assented. “I have done it more than once. You have to find an editor with a subtle brain, but it’s really easily accomplished. You begin on the familiar lines along which the paper has always been conducted. Then one day you hesitate. The Republican government which you are pledged to support is introducing legislation which you venture to criticise. It is the beginning of the rift in the lute. You keep on impressing upon your readers the fact that your principles are sound, that your republican instincts are invulnerable, and by slow degrees you sap away your individual reader’s confidence in his own party by your own apparent difficulty in remaining loyal to it. You are mentioning an extreme case, but it can be done. If you don’t reach one generation, you reach the next.... The minds of all men of brains, if left to themselves, move in the same direction. Show them the same path logically, illuminate it brilliantly, if you like, and they will all tread it. As a matter of fact, there shouldn’t be diversity of thought or opinions at any time in the elementary principles of government. That was the secret Mussolini discovered, by which he redeemed his country.”

The Premier was impressed, but remained a little patronising.

“Aren’t you a trifle sweeping, Mr. Rand?” he objected. “Brains, even of the same calibre, can scarcely all develop along the same lines.”

“They should, so far as regards the broad thoroughfares,” Warren Rand insisted.

“Why don’t they, then?” his host demanded.

“Bad education,” was the swift reply. “Education should be universal and its principles—its basic principles—should be fixed upon the same foundation. What the world wants—”

He broke off. His companion waited expectantly.

“Please go on, Mr. Rand,” he invited. “Of course you’re exploiting the principles of socialism, but I have an idea that what you were going to say would be your own apologia.”

“But I am not ready to say it,” Warren Rand declared bluntly. “There are other more interesting things which I prefer to discuss with you.”

The Premier remembered who he was, sipped the wine of self-confidence, and pressed his point.

“But, Mr. Rand,” he continued, “I beg of you to be frank with me. It might be worth our while to show our minds to each other.”

“I doubt it,” Warren Rand muttered.

“Very few people in the world,” the Premier went on, “know anything about you. Those who do have the idea that you are a sort of self-appointed prophet, with a great cause living in your brain and heart, which, when the proper time comes, you are prepared to expound. In the meantime—owing to your command of the Press—you have certainly acquired an immense power, even if I cannot give it quite the place in life which you claim for it. Incidentally, you have also, they tell me, by a series of very brilliant financial coups, become one of the richest of living men.”

“That is quite possible,” Warren Rand admitted. “What of it?”

The Premier was inclined to resent the curtness of his guest’s tone, but he did his best to conceal the fact.

“You must acquit me,” he begged, “of any personal curiosity. Your position becomes interesting to me solely from a patriotic point of view. With the various recognised governments of the world we are in touch through our ambassadors and through our commercial agents. In you we have to appreciate a concentrated force, with the potentialities of a nation, but without its self-expression. They tell me strange things about you, Mr. Rand.”

“I break no laws to which I subscribe,” Warren Rand observed. “I go my own way.”

“Precisely; but what is it?” the Premier demanded, tapping upon the table with his spectacles, a favourite gesture of his when addressing a larger audience. “How do we stand to be affected by any movement you might make? Is it part of your scheme to attempt to force upon the world a new doctrine of politics or sociology? Which way are we to look for the thunderbolt?”

“If you remain in office long enough,” Warren Rand said coldly, “you will probably be the first to understand fully what I am working for. I am afraid, however, that your government has scarcely enough stability to look far enough into the future.”

The Prime Minister flushed. Only a few weeks before a vote of censure had been defeated by the narrowest of majorities, and, day by day, his heterogeneous group of supporters was becoming more restless.

“We have passed through troublesome times during the last few years, Mr. Rand,” he admitted. “Things ahead, though, are shaping more clearly.”

“Your party, as a party, scarcely exists,” was the dry reply. “You have had to call in all sorts of outsiders to keep you in office at all. You govern because no one else wants to govern for the moment. That is to say, you govern not through the will of the people but through their lack of will. The last election was simply a stalemate. Any suggestion of another Conservative Government, after their calamitous record of the last seven years, would have meant a revolution. You, with your halting declaration of policy, and the wreck of the Liberal Party, were all that remained. You can’t last, though.”

The Prime Minister stared at his visitor for a moment, bit his lip, and laughed a little nervously.

“One scarcely expects quite so much frankness, Mr. Rand,” he remarked.

“Nothing in the world is worth considering except the truth. I hate humbug. That’s why my Press is feared and respected throughout the world. I hope you will understand,” the visitor went on, with a belated regard for the amenities, “that nothing I have said is in the slightest degree personal.”

A servant brought in coffee and cigars. Warren Rand helped himself to both and accepted a generous glass of brandy. He waited until the man had left the room before he continued.

“I trust that you will not consider that I have been too frank,” he said. “I should repay your hospitality badly if I talked otherwise than truthfully to you. Politically, we both know that your country is in a hopeless muddle for the present. You haven’t a party or the makings of a party strong enough to rule with dignity or with self-respect. When the time arrives, however, for another election, the Conservatives will naturally have become disintegrated, and I imagine that the few able men of your party will join them. As soon as that happens, you will find me in Downing Street. At present, England is politically moribund. Whatever world changes I might be planning, the support of your country, as it exists at present, is scarcely worth asking for.”

The Prime Minister’s secretary made apologetic entrance. He handed a slip of paper to his Chief, who glanced at it and nodded briefly.

“Tell Mr. Fogge to come round at once,” he directed. “Have you ever met the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Rand?” he asked, turning to his guest.

“Never,” was the colourless reply.

“I want you just to shake hands with him, if you will. We sha’n’t keep you, because I must be in the House in ten minutes.”

Warren Rand acquiesced without enthusiasm. At his companion’s gestured invitation, he snipped another cigar and lit it.

“I should think you would be glad to be rid of me,” he observed.

The Premier made a little grimace.

“You have told me some home truths,” he admitted, “but you’re too honest about the affair, and also too ignorant,” he added, with the smile of a man getting a little of his own back again, “for me to take offence. À propos of a portion of your conversation, did you see the leading article this morning in the Sun?”

“I wrote it.”

Trowse was momentarily bewildered.

“I mean our principal newspaper,” he explained. “It belongs to Gervoise Harrison. Harold Nickols is the editor.”

“Ancient history,” Warren Rand confided. “I bought the paper at midnight yesterday, when I found out what their Geneva policy was. I wrote the article in the office—kept the machinery waiting—had to destroy a few thousand copies with Harold Nickols’ stuff in.”

The Premier stared at his visitor, open-mouthed.

“You’re not in earnest, Mr. Rand? You don’t mean to tell me that you have bought the Sun?”

“I certainly have,” Warren Rand affirmed. “You will have an opportunity of seeing how I can transform a newspaper. I know the tricks, you see.”

He rose to his feet. There was a knock at the door and, in response to Trowse’s invitation, a tall, scholarly-looking man entered. He was untidily dressed, thin, with ascetic features, tired eyes, but a wonderfully pleasant smile.

“Mr. Rand,” the Premier said, “this is Mr. Fogge, our Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

The two men shook hands; Warren Rand in somewhat puppet-like fashion and with only a muttered reply to the other’s courteous speech.

“I see that you are on the point of departure, Mr. Rand,” the Chancellor observed. “I shall not detain you for a moment. There is just one question I have been longing to put to a financial expert such as yourself, because our people here in London merely contradict one another. Can you tell me who is this secret buyer of gold in every market in the world?”

“Perhaps I could,” was the blunt reply, “but it isn’t my business to at the present moment.”

Mr. Fogge, who was renowned for his courtier-like manners, was a little taken aback.

“Your reply would scarcely involve any breach of confidence, would it?” he ventured.

“Perhaps not. My reply, however, might lead to a discussion into which I am not prepared to enter just yet. Thank you very much for your hospitality, Mr. Trowse,” he added. “You will excuse me if I hurry away now.”

The two men walked with him to the door.

“What are your plans?” the Premier asked. “Where can I find you?”

“Don’t bother about me for a week or so,” the departing guest begged. “I hate purposeless conversations. We’re no use to each other at the moment. The time may come later on in the year when I can talk to you in another language. I may even be able to answer Mr. Fogge’s question.”

“Well, I’m sorry you think so little of us, Mr. Rand. Perhaps we may gain more of your confidence soon,” was the Premier’s farewell speech. “Carstairs, take Mr. Rand to the south entrance,” he added, as the secretary appeared once more.

“If you’ll follow me, sir,” the latter invited.

Warren Rand traversed the corridor and bade his guide a brief good night. He declined the offer of a taxicab or car and passed through the main gates, crossing the road towards the Embankment. The man who had been waiting for him for the last hour and a half followed.