2 My uncle’s opinion was endorsed, perhaps naturally, by one who was a new man himself and who introduced me at this time to some at least of the other new men. Nearly four years have passed since I began to watch this battle of old and new; I am watching still, and the battle is undecided. It was on the day when our paper was reborn that our old advertisement-manager called in Fetter Lane to prove that we were working on wrong lines; and, as he knew enough of mob-psychology to make a fortune out of it, I listened respectfully to the criticism and studied the critic. Sir Philip Saltash had travelled far since the August day when Bertrand paid off the staff—Mr. Saltash included—and brought _Peace_ to an end by shivering the electros of the headings with a mallet; he was to travel farther before he entered the House of Lords as Lord Saltash of Bonde, publicity-expert and political wire-puller. How much farther he will travel is another of the things I am watching. “If _you_ think people will listen to the _stuff_ your old man’s put in his _prospectus_,” he began with a force and directness that made me feel the new men were bringing new manners with them, “you’re making the mistake of your life. You may be right; every one else may be wrong . . .” As he paused with a shrug of contemptuous challenge, I reminded myself that he was come to offer me publicity for _Peace_ and must therefore prove that, without publicity, _Peace_ would wilt and die. “My uncle feels,” I said, “that it’s bad policy to cure one Alsace-Lorraine by setting up half-a-dozen others. It’s time _some_ one made a protest against the last election.” “Even if no one pays any attention to it? Mark you, I can _make_ people listen,” he added, as he rolled an unlighted cigar from side to side of his loose mouth; and I tried to recall how many million pounds Saltash had advertised into war-loans and how many thousand men he had ordered, from his ubiquitous hoardings, into the army. “That’s my job. _Has_ been, ever since I left you.” “How would you make people listen to _us_?,” I asked. Saltash caught up a copy of our first number and turned the pages with loud slaps of an annihilating hand. I have forgotten his technical proposals, though I remember that he kindled me with his cleverness the while he was outraging me with his vulgarity. I have not, however, forgotten his lyrical flights in describing the place of publicity in public life. I had met “press-secretaries” and heard of “propaganda sections” in government departments; I had suspected that certain ministers were raised or disgraced at the bidding of certain newspaper-proprietors; but I had not imagined that newspaper-proprietors themselves struck or spared at the behest of men like Saltash, who in their turn controlled the flow of information from Whitehall to Fleet Street.