“It’s a question of spot-light,” Saltash explained; and I learned that, when Dormer came to grief over food-rationing, it was Saltash’s artful manipulation of the switches that saved him from public vengeance and secured him his seat in the cabinet. “I never _did_ think Dormer was to blame,” I happened to interpose. “I never let you!,” cried Saltash. “Remember the Flying Corps scandal? _I_ did that. And you soon forgot about Dormer. I told him from the first he had only to lie quiet. . . . Later on . . .” Later on, without prompting, I remembered Dormer’s reappearance. Discovered by the caricaturists and taken to the heart of the public, Dormer—with his vast chin and grotesque hat—became a music-hall hero. “Our Willie” was acclaimed by the gallery with the loyal fervour accorded in other days to “good old Joe”. The _Snap-Shot_ shewed him pruning roses with his smiling wife in an “old-world garden” and playing bumble-puppy with his apple-cheeked children. Finally, in the last days of a united front against a common foe, his portrait was thrown on the screen—after those of King Albert and General Joffre, Lord Kitchener and Mr. Lloyd-George—as the man who had saved England from starvation. The cost of Dormer’s apotheosis was one baronetcy and the promise of a peerage when the more squeamish section of the government was better used to the Saltash idea. “Spot-light,” repeated the wizard. “People can’t look at more than one thing at a time. Has it ever occurred to you why the old coalition went and the new one came? The ginger-group were working that way from the day Asquith carried conscription for them; they didn’t need him after that, but the public wasn’t ready for a change. Well, it was my job to _make_ the public ready. I concentrated opinion against certain men and never left ’em alone; I concentrated in favour of others. The Dardanelles. Mesopotamia. Shells. Food. You and I know that the new lot were tarred with the same brush as the old; but we made the public think they’d been on another planet when all these messes were made. The old lot were too quiet; they never hit back.” “There was a war on,” I reminded him. “They would never have fallen if they’d shewn fight,” Saltash retorted. “A man’s power in politics is what he makes others believe it to be. ‘This war is too big for ordinary folk,’ people were saying: ‘we want supermen.’ Well, we said the new lot _were_ supermen. When there weren’t enough to go round, we made so much din that office-sweepers seemed like supermen. We restored confidence; and we frightened the Germans. Now, you say you’re reviving the old rag and your slogan is to be ‘a _lasting_ peace’. You’ll be called pro-Boche. You’ll be told you’re letting the Hun off. I don’t despair, though. The first thing is to out the present lot; and I can do that on departmental scandals alone. ’Got all the papers. Then we must prepare a big peace-boost. . . . Lunch with me and talk it over.”