Among the leading politicians of the North in those days was my old friend and fellow-townsman, Joseph Cowen, of Newcastle. He had been to some extent alienated from Mr. Gladstone and from the Liberal party by disappointment, but he still called himself a Liberal, and there was no reason to doubt that his political instincts were sound, and that he might again become one of the Liberal leaders of the North. He took, as he had always taken, a strong line with regard to Russia, which he looked upon as the parent of Continental despotism and the traditional enemy of human freedom. Mr. Stead, full of zeal for the cause represented by Madame Novikoff, made a series of vehement and persistent attacks upon Cowen because of his views regarding Russia and the Eastern Question generally. One day he sent me one of his marked papers containing a particularly impassioned onslaught upon the member for Newcastle. I considered that he had invited comment by sending me this article, and I wrote to him to expostulate with him on the line he was taking, pointing out that Cowen, who was a very sensitive man, was not unlikely to be driven out of the party if these attacks were persisted in, and that his loss would be a serious one to the Liberalism of the North of England. I don't think I said anything particularly harsh in this letter, which was in my opinion justified by my relations both with Cowen and with Stead. The rejoinder was not what I had expected. It came in the shape of an immensely long article in the _Northern Echo_ entitled, if I remember aright, "The Editor of the _Leeds Mercury_ and Mr. Cowen." In this article something I had written about Cowen in the _Mercury_--I forget what--was held up to ridicule, and was compared with my private sentiments regarding the member for Newcastle as they had been gleaned by Mr. Stead in that night-long conversation under my roof, of which I have spoken in this chapter. Needless to say, my talk was not faithfully remembered or accurately represented. That, in itself, was a small matter, but the illustration thus afforded me of the practical working of the New Journalism was not altogether a pleasant one, and for some years after this episode there was a distinct coolness between Mr. Stead and myself. The incident arouses no bitterness now. Mr. Stead honestly believed that he was entitled to use my frank _obiter dicta_ for the purpose of correcting what he regarded as my public errors. I was not the last and by no means the greatest sufferer from this theory on the part of the founder of the New Journalism; but, as having been in some small degree a sufferer at his hands, I am, perhaps, the better able to bear testimony to his absolute honesty of intention, and to his unfailing conviction that in even his greatest indiscretions he was acting under the justification of a high moral purpose.