ABSTRACT
SHE saw her husband rarely, for her time was much occupied. She worked early and late preparing manifestoes, rehearsing her new play, seeing delegates, influencing important persons. She had obtained almost complete control of the Zenith, and thus was able to see published, every day, leading articles subtly bearing on her designs, and this was enormously in favour of the Bill. For England, at that period, was in thrall to the Press. When once a man had decided to which party he belonged, he took a daily paper that never gave him a chance of changing his views, and he believed in that paper with far more fervour than he believed in God. Everything he found in it was as the Tables of Law from Mount Sinai. Occasionally a rude shock, such as criticism of some political hero, would shake his faith for the moment, but he always swerved round again, and paperspapers like the Zenith never indulged in such shoks. They chose a hero and swore by him for ever, whatever his acts. If he changed his creed, they changed with him! And they never criticized their country, knowing well that a big circulatio could be obtained only through patriotic complacency. So long as a paper shoed the nation to itself through rose-coloured glasses; so long as it raved and effervesced over England’s glory, England’s goodness, England’s perfect monarch, Enland’s noble aristocracy, England’s superiority in virtue, genius, benevolence laws, manners, and customs, it was bound to sell like hot cakes.
