The greater necessity that he should keep himself before the public in the news. His projected libel suit against The Guardian would be one method. After considerable delay the suit was filed. But here again the unlucky politician missed fire. Nobody paid much heed to his libel action. For, on the day when it was instituted, the patience of a long-enduring President and people broke and the Government of the United States of America bared the sword between the flag and its insulters overseas. CHAPTER XI HOW essential a prop Martin Embree’s influence had been to the threatened fortunes of The Guardian, its editor was now to learn. Where, hitherto, the paper had offended, “Smiling Mart” had palliated, explained, excused, defended, spreading the soothing oil of his diplomacy with expert healing. Now the bland oil was supplanted by salt to rub into the wounds. At this, too, the Governor plied a master-hand. The “firebrand” interview, given to the papers of the State, in which he solemnly and all but officially anathematized The Guardian as an incendiary and anarchical agency, rallied the forces of peace-at-any-price and helped to organize them for the ruin of The Guardian. This was in the interval between the establishment of the State Council of Defense and the declaration of war, a period when Centralia still blundered about in a fog of delusion, blindly discrediting the inevitable. Vainly a few dailies strove to force the truth upon them; The Bellair Journal, The Guardian, a handful of lesser papers. It was to be read between the lines of the German-language press, exhorting their people to be firm of spirit and stand together whatever might betide, warning them that British agencies were in control of the Administration, openly flouting and vilifying the Government of the Nation at a time when politicians of all parties but the Kaiser’s had forgotten every consideration but loyalty, extolling and exalting Germany, snarling at the military “pretensions” of the United States, appealing to racial divisions in a last-hour attempt to devitalize the war-spirit. But the Centralians, breathing the murky air of their pacifists’ paradise, were in no mood to read between the lines. For them the assurances of the great bulk of their newspapers sufficed. These, either themselves deceived, or fearful of reprisals, or simply accepting that old-time tenet of the pander “Give the public what it wants,” would not admit the possibility of this Nation’s being drawn into the struggle. War? Those who prophesied it were fools playing with fire. They were in Wall Street’s pay. They were traitors to a peace-loving people. And Centralia, for the most part, read and believed.