The attitude is simple; we are not taken seriously. Novelists have to take mankind seriously because they want to understand it; mankind is exempt from the obligation because it does not conceive the desire. We are not people who take degrees, who can be scheduled and classified. We are not Doctors of Science, Licentiates of Music Schools. We are just men and women of some slight independence, therefore criminals, men who want to observe and not men who want to do, therefore incredible. And so, because we cannot fall into the classes made for those who can be classified, we are outside class, below class. We are the mistletoe on the social oak. It is perhaps in search of dignity and status that the modern novelist has taken to journalism. Journalism raises a novelist's status, for a view expressed by a fictitious character is not taken seriously, while the same view fastened to an event of the day acquires importance, satisfies the specific function of the press, which is more and more that of a champion of found causes. The newspaper is a better jumping-off ground than the pulpit or the professorial chair; it enjoys a vast circulation, which the novel does not; it conveys an idea to millions of people who would never think of buying a newspaper for the sake of an idea, but who buy it for news, murder cases or corn market reports; it is a place where a writer may be serious, _because the newspaper is labelled as serious, while the novel is labelled as frivolous_. This is vital to the proposition, and explains why so many novelists have sought refuge in the press. It is not exactly a question of money. Journalism rewards a successful novelist better than does the novel, though successful novelists make very good incomes; they often earn as much as the red-nosed comedian with the baggy trousers and the battered bowler. Thackeray, Washington Irving, Kingsley, and notably Dickens, knew the value of journalism. Dickens was the most peculiar case, for it is fairly clear that _Nicholas Nickleby_ helped to suppress the ragged schools and that _Oliver Twist_ was instrumental in reforming workhouse law; both works were immensely successful, but Dickens felt that he wanted a platform where he could be always wholly serious: for this the _Daily News_ was born in 1846. Likewise Mr Wells has written enormously upon the war and economics; Mr Arnold Bennett has printed many political articles; Mr Galsworthy has become more direct than a novelist can be and written largely on cruelty to animals, prison reform, etc. It is the only way in which we can be taken seriously. We must be solemn, a little dull, patriotic or unpatriotic, socialistic or conservative; there is only one thing we may not be, and that is creative and emotional.