In the meanwhile, what is the young writer to do? In particular, the young novelist? He appears to be about to be among the most miserable of mankind. To be published and to be a commercial failure is bad enough in a country like our own, where a _succès d’estime_ is almost a certificate for pity. But not to be published at all is infinitely worse. Instead of appealing to commercial publishers, however, is it not possible to appeal to the Guild of Authors, to the fraternity whose function and responsibility are the creation and encouragement of literature? Who should be patrons of literature if not men of letters themselves? And whose duty should it be, if not that of novelists as a guild, to secure the succession and to provide for the future princes? If publishers are willing to assume the burdens of literature—always heavy in proportion to the ignorance of the public—let them by all means. So much the more honour to them. But the proper shoulders for the burden, in the absence of an enlightened public, are the shoulders of the Guild of Letters, the shoulders, in particular, of the _successful_ men. There is no lack of money among them. I should roughly calculate that the income of our successful novelists is more than equal to that of all our publishers put together. Why should they not subsidise literature? Why, out of their abundance, should they not set aside a portion for their literary posterity? ON GUARD.—As one of the thirty thousand who take in and occasionally read _The Times Literary Supplement_, I may draw attention to the danger to truth its composite character is always creating. Being familiar with the back-ways of publishing I am not taken in, of course, by the uniform use of the editorial “we” in a journal like _The Times Literary Supplement_. “We” represents a score of different people, all or most of whom are as much at intellectual sixes and sevens as any other score; and the editor-in-chief, whoever he may be, is just as powerless as a sovereign is over its twenty shillings. That being granted, the situation is still a little strange from the fact that certain sentiments are allowed to appear in the _Literary Supplement_ which, to say the least, are incongruous with _The Times_ and all _The Times_ stands for. Here, for instance, are three quotations from recent issues: “Whether you beat your neighbour by militarism or buy him by industrialism—the effect is the same.” “That most false and nauseating of legends—‘the happy warrior.’” “The organisation of trade is of secondary moment: what is of the first moment is the organisation of a humane enjoyment of its benefits.” These sentiments are true, and they are sufficiently strikingly put. But in _The Times Literary Supplement_ they are not only incongruous, but they are in a very subtle sense actually lies, and the more dangerous lies from their identity with the truth. It is one of the paradoxes of truth that a statement is only true when it is in truthful company. As the