"Well, you don't," Hubbard repeated. He has rather a rapid and abrupt manner of speech that enables him better than anybody I know to carry off the things men are usually a little shy about. "The Bradford man has his affairs, I know, and it may sometimes be an advantage to get a letter there a couple of hours quicker, but that's not the point. There are two points, as a matter of fact. One's the training of your men, and the other's continuity of manufacture. If this country forgets either of 'em it may as well chuck its hand in. Why," he exclaimed in a phrase that arrested me in a quite remarkable way as chiming in so exactly with my own private observations, "look at the Elizabethans! What did _they_ do? They wanted ships and they wanted sailors. So they developed the North Sea fishing industry. Gave 'em all sorts of bonuses and rebates and privileges. Not for the sake of a few dead fish. Not on your life. It was to keep the men in training and the shipyards running and the Spaniard out. And it's the same with civil aviation to-day." I won't say that I had never thought of this before. But one thinks of all sorts of things that evaporate in the thinking, so that for practical purposes they might just as well never have been thought. It was his energy and certitude and single-mindedness that gave it all its force. And although I am a journalist, that is why I think that all our print is dead and cold until it is vivified by the heard and passionate voice. Oh, I know the stock argument--that for one that is reached by the human voice a thousand are influenced by the printed word. Well, so they are, until a contradictory word is printed and both messages jam to a standstill. But you can't jam the pentecostal flames that give the prophets utterance. I am inclined to think that if there is one indestructible thing in the world it is the Uttered Word. Naturally I refrain from dwelling too much on this in the office of the _Daily Circus_. But it lies behind every word of our print for all that. "Another thing," Hubbard continued. "I don't know much about the Elizabethans, but I'm prepared to bet that a good many of 'em were youngsters. While old Burleigh was nodding, some infant just out of his cradle was getting away with it. At all events, there's no reason that I can see why he shouldn't as well be twenty as ninety--every practical reason why he should, in fact." "Do you mean young Smith's like that?" I suddenly asked. Perhaps it wasn't quite fair. When a man has the pluck to talk on these lines it is rather a cold douche to bring it all down to one finite and fallible human being. Even the pentecostal flame may flicker at times. But I noticed that Hubbard did not say No. Indeed, he did not answer me at all. His eyes were on the child with the fiddle again and the living, climbing fingers. "Clever hands, aren't they?" he said. "Wish I could play the fiddle." IX