"Are--are they doing that?" Amory asked in a whisper. "Really? And is that the bi-metallists' doing--or is it the Home Government? Do explain it to me so that I can visualize it. You know I always understand things better when I can visualize them. That's because I'm an artist.--Does it mean that there are long strings of natives, with baskets and things on their heads to put the pennies in, all waiting at the Banks, like people in the theatre-queues?" "I dare say. I suppose they have to carry the pennies somehow. But I'm afraid I can't tell you more than's in the papers." Amory's face assumed an expression of contempt. On the papers she was quite pat. "The papers! And how much of the truth can we get from the capitalist press, I should like to know! Why, it's a commonplace among us--one is almost ashamed to say it again--that the 'Times' is always wrong! We have _no_ Imperialist papers really; only Jingo ones. Is there _no_ way of finding out what this--crisis--is really about?" This was quite an easy one for Mr. Strong. Many times in the past, when pressed thus by his proprietor's wife for small, but exact, details, he had wished that he had known even as much about them as seemed to be known by that smart young man who had once come to The Witan in a morning coat and had told Edgar Strong that he didn't know what he was talking about. But he had long since found a way out of these trifling difficulties. Lift the issue high enough, and it is true of most things that one man's opinion is as good as another's; and they lifted issues quite toweringly high on the "Novum." Therefore in self-defence Mr. Strong flapped (so to speak) his wings, gave a struggle, cleared the earth, and was away in the empyrean of the New Imperialism. "The 'Times' always wrong. Yes. We've got to stick firmly to that," he said. "But don't you see, that very fact makes it in its way quite a useful guide. It's the next best thing to being always right, like us; we can depend on its being wrong. We've only got to contradict it, and then ask ourselves why we do so. There's usually a reason.... So there is in this--er--crisis. Of course you know their argument--that a lot of these young native doctors and lawyers come over here, and stop long enough to pick up the latest wrinkles in swindling--the civilized improvements so to speak--and then go back and start these wildcat schemes, Banks and so on, and there's a smash. I think that's a fair statement of their case.--But what's ours? Why, simply that what they're really doing is to give the Home Government a perfectly beautiful opportunity of living up to its own humane professions.... But we know what that means," he added sadly. "You mean that it just shows," said Amory eagerly, "that we aren't humane at all really? In fact, that England's a humbug?" Mr. Strong smiled. He too, in a sense, was paying out in pennies, and so far quite satisfactorily.