There was a plentiful crop of grey hairs sown between Charing Cross and Ludgate Hill in the early hours of that summer morning. With his mouth to the telephone, Lidiat stirred up the purlieus of Fleet Street and the Strand until office after office, composing room after composing room, and foundry after foundry, all along the line, began to drone and hum resentfully, like an outraged apiary in the dead of night. When he once took up the wire he never put it down again until he had swept the "London Dailies: Morning" section of Sell and Mitchell from beginning to end. Those who wished to retort and temporise after he had done with them, had to fall back upon the telescribe--which involved the disadvantage to Fleet Street of having to write and coldly transmit the indignant messages that it would fain pour hot and blistering into its tormentor's ear. For two hours and a half by the watch beneath his eye he harrowed up all the most cherished journalistic traditions of the land, and from a small, box-like room a mile away, he controlled the reins of the Fourth Estate of an Empire--a large, fat, perspiring man of persuasive authority, and conscious of unlimited capital at his back. By the end of that time chaos had given place to order. _The Scythe_ had shown an amenable disposition with a readiness suggesting that it possibly knew more than it had told in the past. _The Ensign_ was won over by persuasion and the condition of the Navy, and _The Mailed Fist_ was clubbed and bullied and cajoled with big names until it was dazed. For seven minutes Lidiat poured patriotism into the ear of _The Beacon's_ editor, and gold into the coffers of _The Beacon's_ manager, and then turned aside to win over _The Daily News-Letter_ by telling it what _The Daily Chronicler_ was doing, and the _Chronicler_ by reporting the _News-Letter's_ acquiescence. _The Morning Post Card_ remained obdurate for half an hour, and only capitulated after driving down and having an interview with Hampden. _The Great Daily_--well, for more than a year _The Great Daily_ had been the property and organ of the League, only no one had suspected it. The little _Illustrated Hour_, beset by the difficulty of half-tone blocks, and frantic at the thought of having to recast its plates and engage in the mysteries of "making ready" again after half its edition had been run off, was the last to submit. So long was it in making up its mind, that at last Lidiat sarcastically proposed an inset, and, taking the suggestion in all good faith, the _Illustrated Hour_ startled its sober patrons by bearing on its outside page a gummed leaflet containing a leaderette and two news paragraphs.