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--"

"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."

Gwent smoked leisurely, regarding his companion with unfeigned interest.

"Apparently you haven't much respect for life?" he said.

"Not when it is diseased life--not when it is perverted
life;"--returned Seaton--"Then it is mere deformity and encumbrance.
For life itself in all its plenitude, health and beauty I have the
deepest, most passionate respect. It is the outward ray or reflex of
the image of God--"

"Stop there!" interrupted Gwent--"You believe in God?"

"I do,--most utterly! That is to say I believe in an all-pervading Mind
o