“Of course.”
“Editorially, I mean.”
“I understand. At least the editorials will be a direct method of attack, and an honest one. I may assume that much?”
“Have you ever seen anything in the editorial columns of The Patriot that would lead you to assume otherwise?”
“Answering categorically I would have to say ‘No.’
“Answer as you please.”
“Then I will say,” observed the other, speaking with marked deliberation, “that on one occasion I have failed to see matter which I thought might logically appear there and the absence of which afforded me food for thought. Do you know Peter McClintick?”
“Yes. Has he been talking to you about the Veridian killings?”
Enderby nodded. “One could not but contrast your silence on that subject with your eloquence against the Steel Trust persecutions, consisting, if I recall, in putting agitators in jail for six months. Quite wrongly, I concede. But hardly as bad as shooting them down as they sleep, and their families with them.”
“Tell me what you would have done in my place, then.” Banneker stated the case of the Veridian Mills strike simply and fairly. “Could I turn the columns of his own paper on Marrineal for what was not even his fault?”