whole entire Cabinet, in short,
are unanimously of the same opinion as Pooh Bah. He doesn't know it's
only Pooh Bah speaking from different corners of the stage. The
consensus of opinion convinces him. One statesman, however eminent,
might err in judgment. But half a score of statesmen, all of one mind!
One must accept their verdict."

Mary smiled. "But why shouldn't the good newspaper proprietor hurry up
and become a multi-proprietor?" she suggested. "Why don't you persuade
Lord Sutcliffe to buy up three or four papers, before they're all gone?"

"Because I don't want the Devil to get hold of him," answered Greyson.

"You've got to face this unalterable law," he continued. "That power
derived from worldly sources can only be employed for worldly purposes.
The power conferred by popularity, by wealth, by that ability to make use
of other men that we term organization--sooner or later the man who
wields that power becomes the Devil's servant. So long as Kingship was
merely a force struggling against anarchy, it was a holy weapon. As it
grew in power so it degenerated into an instrument of tyranny. The
Church, so long as it remained a scattered body of meek, lowly men, did
the Lord's work. Enthroned at Rome, it thundered its edicts against
human thought. The Press is in danger of following precisely the same
history. When it wrote in fear of the pillory and of the jail, it fought
for Liberty. Now it has become the Fourth Estate, it fawns--as Jack
Swinton said of it--at the feet of Mammon. My Proprietor, good fellow,
allows me to cultivate my plot amid the wilderness for other purposes
than those of quick returns. If he were to become a competitor with the
Carletons and the Bloomfields, he would have to look upon it as a
business proposition. The Devil would take him up on to the high
mountain, and point out to him the kingdom of huge circulations and vast
profits, whispering to him: 'All this will I give thee, if thou wilt fall
down and worship me.' I don't want the dear good fellow to be tempted."

"Is it impossible, then, to combine duty and success?" questioned Joan.

"The combination sometimes happens, by chance," admitted Greyson. "But
it's dangerous to seek it. It is so easy to persuade ourselves that it's
our duty to succeed."

"But we must succeed to be of use," urged Mary. "Must God's servants
always remain powerless?"

"Powerless to rule. Powerful only to serve," he answered. "Power