There is one other point, but it is rather a delicate matter: Messrs.
Mump and Gump say to the prospective Candidate, "Your constituents must
see and know you before you can hope for their vote." Are they quite
right? I have seen a good many Candidates in my time, and I can think of
some to whom I should have said, "Your constituents must _never_ see you
if you hope for a single vote." I mean, when one looks round the present
House of Commons, one really marvels how.... But perhaps I had better
not go on with that. The point is that a Candidate of that kind never
_need_ be seen by his constituents now. A handsome young private
secretary, uniformed and beribboned, and the film does the rest.

Then I rather resent the assumption that Members of Parliament, Mayors,
Lecturers and Actors are the only people who require publicity. I should
have thought that those who spend their time writing things in the
public Press, which are read by the public (if anybody), might have had
at least the courtesy title of Public Man. Anyhow, I am going to have
three guineas' worth. The only question is, what sort of picture will
most thoroughly "get" my personality before a third of the population
once a week? The moment when I am most characteristic is when I am lying
in a hot bath, and to-morrow is Sunday; but I doubt if even a sixth of
the population would be really keen on that. I don't mind writing a
letter or two, only, if it meant an extra reel every time I decided to
write it to-morrow instead, it would be rather a costly advertisement.

Really, I suppose, one ought to be done _At Work in His Study_; but even
that would require a good deal of faking. Ought one, for instance, to
remove the golf-balls and the cocoa-cup (and the rhyming dictionary)
from The Desk? Then I always write with a decayed pencil, and that would
look so bad. Messrs. Mump and Gump would have to throw in a quill-pen.
And I have no Study. I work in the drawingroom, when the children are
not playing in it. To go into The Study I simply walk over to my table
and put up a large notice: "THE STUDY. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME. I AM
THINKING." Do you think that had better be in the film?

Or I wonder if a Comic would be more effective--a Shaving reel or a
Dressing reel? It is the small incidents of every-day life that one
should look to for the key to the character of a Public Man; and once a
whole third of the population had seen for themselves what pain it gives
me to put l