The oldest trick in the bag of a political journalist is to find out what policy is going to be followed, to insist vehemently that this policy must be followed and to take credit for having forced his own policy on a vacillating and apathetic government. During the war, Sir John Woburn preached conscription from the moment when his chief spy in the cabinet had revealed that ministers were agreed to bring conscription in: the Press Combine advertised itself for months as the mouthpiece of that opinion which demanded conscription; and, when the first military service act was passed, Woburn stood forth as the giant who had forced the government, in his own phrase, “to give Haig the men”. I have to guard against the temptation to employ this trick in writing of our campaign in 1921. Independently of our prompting, every one was saying that ministers must govern or go; and I only realized how far opinion had swung, when I met the lately ennobled Lord Saltash at a public dinner. “Well, things are moving,” he began darkly, as he led me to the Turf and Stage and pointed from an unobserved corner of the gallery to Lord Lingfield’s customary table. I needed a few minutes to penetrate the familiar externals. My cousin Laurence Hunter-Oakleigh was entertaining a party of American revue actresses; Sam Dainton was dancing with Ivy Gaymer; and the inscrutable Gaspard was watching and ministering with his wonted resourcefulness and address. It was like going back to a play at the end of a long run. I felt that they must all of them have been frozen in the same attitude since last I looked down on the top of their heads a year before. The band, which played unceasingly from the moment we arrived to the moment we left, might well have been playing for twelve months on end. It was impossible to think of these sleek heads and slim figures without their Turf and Stage frame, unless you thought of them as the brilliant, glossy chorus of mannequins and salesmen in a musical comedy at the Hilarity in old days. Had they homes? Had they private lives? “I see Wister is withdrawing the support of his papers from the coalition,” I said. “Yes, he’s out for an all-conservative ministry,” answered Saltash. “Foreditch put him up to it; and you can see they’re trying to nobble Wilmot Dean for their new ginger-group. The rank-and-file tories don’t want to drive Ll-G. out, though, till they’re sure of keeping him out. And Lingfield, who’s leading the rank-and-file, doesn’t believe they can do it yet, unless Bonar comes back. That’s why he wants a centre party, to include Birkenhead, Winston and that lot. It’s interesting, devilish interesting! The dying lion ain’t dead yet.” “What line are you taking yourself?,” I asked.