_L.E._ Platform? To anyone who has tho slightest acquaintance with Applecart the very idea of a platform is fantastic. He doesn't stand; he soars. _P.E._ Well, what are his _views_, then? Pretty tall, I suppose, if he's such a high flier. _L.E._ You may well say so. In the first place he discards all the old artistic formulae. _P.E._ I know; you write a solid slab of purple prose, scissor it into a jig-saw puzzle, serve it with a dazzle dressing and call it the New Poetry. _L.E._ Have your joke, if you will. But, more important still, Applecart is a rebel against humanity and all its fetishes, social, ethical and political. _P.E. (startled)._ A Bolshie, I suppose you mean? _L.E._ The artist is proof against all these vulgar terms of abuse, culled from the hustings. Call him a Pussyfoot as well; you cannot shake him from his pinnacle. _P.E._ Yes, but look here--he's just the sort of pernicious agitator we're out against in _The Crisis_--at least in my department. My special article this morning--three thickly-leaded columns--actually revealed the existence of a most insidious plot to undermine the restraining influence of the House of Lords by the spread of Bolshevik propaganda masquerading as literature. You see, there's a certain section of the Lords, mainly new creations who've only recently been released from various employments, who now for the first time in their lives have leisure for reading; then there's the spread of education among the sporting Peers. Well, these people are ready to succumb to all sorts of poisonous doctrines, if they're served up in what I presume to be the fashionable mode of the moment; and I expect your precious Applecart is one of the Bolsh agents who are laying the trap. You'll have to stop booming him, you know. He's not doing the paper any good. _L.E._ My dear Sir, literature takes no account of the fads and fancies of party politics. And I gather from you that party politics have no use for literature except from a propagandist view. Let us be content to go our own ways in peace. _P.E._ Yes, that's all very well for you and me, but what about the Chief? How does he reconcile these absolutely conflicting standpoints? And what does the public think of it all? _L.E. (confidentially)._ Between you and me, the Chief knows his public. And the public knows its papers. The last thing it wants from us is consistency, which is always boring. Besides (_still more confidentially_), the public doesn't take us quite so seriously as we like to pretend. _P.E._ H'm, maybe you're right. As a matter of fact (_lowering his voice_) I sometimes think I'm a bit of a Socialist myself. _L.E._ Really? As for me (_conspiratorially_), I adore TENNYSON, and EZRA POUND fills me with a secret wrath. Still, the public-- _P.E._ Ah, the public--! Have a drink? [_They pledge each other. NOYES without. They disperse hurriedly._ * * * * *