"Yes, but on this paper we express the point-of-view of the man that owns it. That's him there!" He pointed to the companion picture to the portrait of Napoleon. "If you imagine that we spend hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to express your point-of-view, you're making a big mistake, young fellow my lad. What you want is a soap-box in Hyde Park. You can express your own point-of-view there if you can get anybody to listen to you. Or you can start a paper of your own. But this paper is the soap-box of that chap, and his is the only point-of-view that'll be expressed in it. Do you understand me?"
"I do," said John "All the same, I believe in telling the people the truth!"
The editor touched the bell on his desk. "Are you quite sure," said he, "that you know what the truth is?"
"Of course I'm sure." John began, but before he could finish his sentence, the door of the editor's room was opened by the lady-secretary.
"Good-morning, Mr. MacDermott!" said the editor, reaching for the telephone receiver.
"But I haven't finished yet," John protested.
"I have." He tapped the handle of the telephone.
"You can come and see me again when you've learned sense," he added, after he had given an instruction to the telephone operator. "Good morning!"
"We've no use for John the Baptists here. Good morning!"
"This way, please!" the lady secretary commanded.
John glared at her, half in the mood to ask her what she meant by interrupting him and half in the mood to tell her that it little became a woman to intrude herself into the conversation of men, but the moods did not become complete, and, sulkily calling "Good morning!" to Mr. Clotworthy, he left the office.
"One of these days," he said to the lady secretary when they were in the outer office, "I'll be your boss. And his, too. And I'll sack the pair of you!"
"You'll find the lift at the end of the passage," she replied.
Hinde mocked him for his failure to make the editor of the _Daily Sensation_ accept his view of the universe.
"That man sized you up the minute he clapped his eyes on you," he said. "He's seen hundreds of young fellows like you. We've all seen them. They come down from Oxford and Cambridge with their heads stuffed with ideas pinched from Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, and they try to stampede old Clotworthy. 'By God, I'm a superman!' is their cry, and they say that night and morning and before and after every meal until even they get sick of listening to it. Then they say 'Oh, damn!' and go into the Civil Service, and in three years' time an earthquake wouldn't rouse them. All you youngsters want to go about telling the truth, especially when it's disagreeable, but there isn't one in a million of you is fit to be let loose with the truth, and there isn't one in ten million of men or women wants to be bothered by the truth. Lord alive, Mac, can't you young fellows leave us a few decent lies to comfort ourselves with?..."