"Why not begin with the newspaper offices?" suggested Gwent—"The purlieus of cheap journalism are the breeding-places of the human malaria-mosquito."
"True! And it wouldn't be a bad idea to stamp them out," here Seaton threw back his head with the challenging gesture which was characteristic of his temperament—"But what is called 'the liberty of the press'(it should be called 'the license of the press') is more of an octopus than a mosquito. Cut off one tentacle, it grows another. It's entirely octopus in character, too,—it only lives to fill its stomach."
"Oh, come, come!" and Gwent's little steely eyes sparkled—"It's the 'safe-guard of nations' don't you know?—it stands for honest free speech, truth, patriotism, justice—"
"Good God!" burst out Seaton, impatiently—"When it does, then the 'new world' about which men talk so much may get a beginning! 'Honest free speech—truth!' Why, modern journalism is one GREAT LIE advertised on hoardings from one end of the world to the other!"
"I agree!" said Gwent—"And there you have the root and cause of war! No need to exterminate nations with your destructive stuff,—you should get at the microbes who undermine the nations first. When you can do THAT, you will destroy the guilty and spare the innocent,—whereas your plan of withering a nation into a dust-heap involves the innocent along with the guilty."
"War does that,"—said Seaton, curtly.
"It does. And your aim is to do away with all chance or possibility of war for ever. Good! But you need to attack the actual root of the evil."
Seaton's brow clouded into a frown.
"You're a careful man, Gwent,"—he said—"And, in the main, you are right. I know as well as you do that the license of the press is the devil's finger in the caldron of affairs, stirring up strife between nations that would probably be excellent friends and allies, if it were not for this 'licensed' mischief. But so long as the mob read the lies, so long will the liars flourish. And my argument is that if any two peoples are so brainless as to be led into war by their press, they are not fit to live—no more fit than the mosquitoes that once made Panama a graveyard."
Gwent smoked leisurely, regarding his companion with unfeigned interest.