Next we are shown the Proprietor leaving his private house by aeroplane to visit the office. We see him first alighting on the roof and then entering his private room by a secret door, from a secret staircase. Having removed his slouch hat and cloak and laid aside his dark lantern, he is revealed as a man of destiny indeed.
We see the mottoes on the walls of the room, such as "Always change horses in midstream"; "Always wash dirty linen in public"; "Any stick is good enough to beat a dog with"; "If you throw enough mud some will stick"; "Damn the consequences"; "Disunion is strength"; "After me the Deluge," and so forth.
Then the Proprietor begins to get busy. He too touches bells, and various assistants rush to his presence. The first is the Editor, and we watch the progress of a fateful interview, which is made the more understandable by legends shown on the screen. Thus, after a long course of lip-moving and chin-wagging on the part of the Proprietor, we read the helpful words:—
"The Twenty-three must go."
Then the Editor's lips move and his chin rides up and down and we read the words:—
"But suppose the old man is too clever?"
And so the epoch-making talk goes on and others are summoned to take part in it.
Next, as a guide to the paper's enterprise we are admitted to a meeting of the Cabinet, and are assisted, at last to unravel the mystery as to which Minister it is who gives away the secrets of that assembly, for we watch him in his various disguises on his way to the dark cellar where he meets the political representative of the paper, makes his report and receives the promise of his future reward. It is, we feel confident, this particular section of the film which will secure for it an amazing popularity, though all reference in the Press to Cabinet proceedings has now been made illegal for the duration of the War.
"The Birth of a Fluence," it will be seen, does not confine its energies to the office of the paper. So thorough is the scheme that various pictures have been taken—always, of course, at the usual enormous expense—at even distant places, where its activities, or the result of them, can be studied. For example, we are shown a section of the Front and the delight of the English soldier as he unfolds the paper and discovers that his country is still being goaded towards that healthy disintegration which must necessarily accelerate our victory. And we are even shown one of the paper's defeated candidates seeking the railway-station after the election; for it is notorious that, vast as are the paper's other influences, it is often unable to persuade an electorate to follow it.
The last picture, which also should be of particular interest to the public as proving how sacred the Fourth Estate holds the duty of providing it with accurate reports, shows the whole of the building draped with the habiliments of woe and the staff in deep mourning on learning that the secrecy of the secret session is to be callously and rigorously enforced by the Government. And in this state of prostration the personnel is left. So ends one of the most enthralling films that this country has yet invented.