“Then you’ll probably meet them. New men, new meeting-places.” My uncle laughed mirthlessly. “If Pam or Johnnie Russell . . . It’s the rising tide of democracy. Agricultural depression and death duties have slowly strangled the landed classes; their social influence is tottering. Before the war, Asquith was almost the only prime minister, bar Dizzy, who wasn’t drawn from them; but the prime ministers of the future will come from the middle class . . . till they come from labour. And the stage changes with the actors,” he continued in a deep rumble that carried from the one side of Fleet Street to the other. “_Circumspice!_ When the masses had been taught to read, Newnes gave them _Tit-Bits_; Pearson and Harmsworth followed with the cheap daily press; headlines took the place of news and arguments. The focus shifts to the newspaper office.” We were passing a flamboyant, white-and-gold building described as a “Super Electric Palace de Luxe”; and I asked Bertrand if he thought pictures were coming to take the place of headlines. “It’s not the instrument that matters, but the man who handles it,” he answered. “Does Saltash play on Ll-G. or does Ll-G. play on Saltash? You’ll know better to-night when you’ve seen the new stage with the new men on it. Your modern prime minister doesn’t waste his time with duchesses at Ross House or with dukes at the Carlton. He has suave young secretaries to feed the press; he has rich friends to provide him personally with the sinews of war. He has his publicity agent. And, if he’s wise, he has a chain of intermediaries running through the country, somebody always knowing somebody who knows somebody else, so that he can draw any one into his net at a moment’s notice.” As we crossed Waterloo Place, Bertrand glanced contemptuously at Mr. Gladstone’s old house in Carlton House Terrace. “There’d be no end to the buzzing if Ll-G. spent a week-end with Sir John Woburn: he _must_ be trying to collar the Press combine! But if my Lord Lingfield entertains a few actresses and a jockey or two and a prize-fighter and if Woburn happens to come along . . .? That’s how politics are manufactured nowadays; and the Turf and Stage is the sort of place to see them manufacturing.” 5