In many dovecotes there was, all the same, a mighty flutter. On the side of the angels, amid honorable and right honorable gentlemen all over the House, there was much anticipatory preening of feathers. The plain English of the matter was the country would not stand for a buccaneering war with China. Also there was now a second vital consideration to face. Endor with foolhardy courage had made the curbing of the U. P. the first plank in his platform, yet the result had justified him. The whole country was now alive to the extreme peril of the Newspaper Ring and it was in a mood for action. Said the pundits, it would need a new constitution to do it. But the super-pundits didn’t think so. Or even granting that such was the case, there would be no difficulty. Since the U. P. had taken the affairs of the nation in hand, a new constitution could be delivered every morning with the punctuality of the _Planet_, the _Mercury_ or the U. P. Milk in U. P. germ-proof bottles. John Endor was Home Secretary now. A man not yet forty, with only a few years’ experience of parliamentary life, his rise had been singularly rapid. Without being called upon to serve an apprenticeship in a minor office, at one leap he had reached the Cabinet. True, it was almost the worst Cabinet that had ever misgoverned the country, but at its head was a man of great abilities. And this man, faced with a terrible menace to the world’s peace, was bent upon the only remedy. Come what might, Saul Hartz, “the secret power behind the throne of antichrist,” in the picturesque phrase of John Endor--the prime minister himself preferred the saponaceous to the picturesque--must at all costs be broken. To this end Mr. Williams, with discreet assistance from the Crown lawyers, set himself to devise a Bill. His task was not light, for directly or indirectly almost every salaried official, not to say every wage-earning person in the Island, was now affiliated to the Ring. The measure was on lines long familiar in America, but in “free” Britain it was something new. The Wilberforce Williams Anti-Trust Law was designed for the castration of the U. P. For that reason it was doubtful if it would ever find its way to the statute book. But as its sponsor mildly said, “There is no harm in trying.” From the first, the prime minister was extremely modest about this measure. For one thing, personal modesty was the prime minister’s long suit. On the Front Bench, on the platform, at the dinner table, on the golf course, at an evening party, he had always been so modest as to seem apologetic, not to say deprecatory. “Really, my dear sir--to think that I--of all people--should be asked to form a government--why, my dear sir--you know as well as I do--that the idea is positively--ah--ludicrous.”