I went back to town by an express that had just come in. At Rugby the bookstalls were open and I bought half-a-dozen morning papers, of all kinds and sizes from twenty-four-page Diehard Conservative to the daily pennyworth of revolution. I don't think I realized the full significance of what June had told me till I had thoroughly digested at least a score of their closely printed columns. First of all I read Karelsky's speech verbatim in _The Times_. It was just what I expected--noisy, blatant, self-assertive, full of impertinent jibes at other investigators, and enlivened by quips that would have done credit to a Hyde Park orator. The whole thing gave me the impression of being addressed to the man in the street rather than to the Conference members; there was hardly a sentence that the layman could not _think_ he understood. Theories which most men would have advanced cautiously and modestly, Karelsky hammered out with a sort of slanging, impudent dogmatism; there never could have been, I think, such language spoken to a scientific assembly before. In a long leading article _The Times_ struck a note of cautious approval. "The fact that Herr Karelsky's methods of obtaining publicity savour rather of the market-place than the laboratory, should not blind us to the possibility--nay, even the probability--that he has made a noteworthy contribution to the alleviation of human distress.... It would seem that, if the cases he cites are authentic, he has indeed made an important discovery.... Investigators in all countries will not be slow in examining carefully all the details, many of which, in his desire to tickle the ears of the groundlings, Herr Karelsky has doubtless withheld...." All the other papers had leading articles, but the tone of them varied from straightforward approval to positively ecstatic adulation. It was sickening to wade through some of the pages, especially those of the picture papers, in which Karelsky's face, fat and smiling, stared out from amidst a journalistic rake-up of all his earlier stunts--rejuvenation, Thibetan monasteries, and the rest. "Hats Off To Karelsky!" shouted the _Daily Wire_ rampantly, and even went so far as to praise Karelsky for "talking to the public in words that the public can understand." The _Messenger's_ stuff was evidently the work of old 'Pot' Higgins, for it quoted Tennyson, Goethe, Peter the Great, and (incorrectly) Disraeli.... And to think that it was Saturday, and that the scribes of the Sunday papers were already at work! Oh, my God.... Perhaps it is rather silly to have written that. But I am feeling now, as I write it, what I felt during that journey from Rugby to Euston--not so much hatred of Karelsky for being a mean thief, but disgust at the way everybody was taken in by him. Perhaps I am prejudiced. Perhaps I am bound to be. And, anyhow, it doesn't matter.... I reached London in time for a very late breakfast, and in the early afternoon I went up to Hampstead to see Severn.