fessional politicians is speaking.

It would not be an exciting description. The truth here would not be a
violent or dangerous truth. Let him but write soberly and with truth.
Let him write it as private letters are daily written in dozens about
such folk, or as private conversation runs among those who know them,
and who have no reason to exaggerate their importance, but see them as
they are. Such a description would never be printed! The few owners of
the Press will not turn off the limelight and make a brief, accurate
statement about these mediocrities, because their power to govern
depends upon keeping in the limelight the men whom they control.

Once let the public know what sort of mediocrities the politicians are
and they lose power. Once let them lose power and their hidden masters
lose power.

Take a larger instance: the middle and upper classes are never allowed
by any chance to hear in time the dispute which leads to a strike or a
lock-out.

Here is an example of news which is of the utmost possible importance
to the commonwealth, and to each of us individually. To understand
_why_ a vast domestic dispute has arisen is the very first necessity
for a sound civic judgment. But we never get it. The event
always comes upon us with violence and is always completely
misunderstood--because the Press has boycotted the men's claims.

I talked to dozens of people in my own station of life--that is, of
the professional middle classes--about the great building lock-out
which coincided with the outbreak of the War. _I did not find a single
one who knew that it was a lock-out at all!_ The few who did at least
know the difference between a strike and a lock-out, _all_ thought it
was a strike!

Let no one say that the disgusting falsehoods spread by the Press in
this respect were of no effect The men themselves gave in, and their
perfectly just demands were defeated, mainly because middle-class
opinion _and a great deal of proletarian opinion as well_ had been led
to believe that the builders' cessation of labour was a _strike_ due
to their own initiative against existing conditions, and thought the
operation of such an initiative immoral in time of war. They did not
know the plain truth that the provocation was the masters', and that
the men were turned out of employment, that is deprived of access to
the Capitalist stores of food and all other necessaries, wantonly and
avariciously by the masters. The Press would n