s" was the work of one
merry moment for the printers upstairs. So the inverted commas were
lifted entirely off one word on to the other and a totally innocent
title suddenly turned into a blasting sneer. But that would have
mattered nothing so far, for there was nothing to sneer at. In the same
dark hour, however, there was a printer who was (I suppose) so devoted
to this Government that he could think of no Gray but Sir Edward Grey.
He spelt it "Grey" by a mere misprint, and the whole tale was complete:
first blunder, second blunder, and final condemnation.

That is a little tale of journalism as it is; if you call it egotistic
and ask what is the use of it I think I could tell you. You might
remember it when next some ordinary young workman is going to be hanged
by the neck on circumstantial evidence.

THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT

Of all the great nations of Christendom, the Scotch are by far the most
romantic. I have just enough Scotch experience and just enough Scotch
blood to know this in the only way in which a thing can really be known;
that is, when the outer world and the inner world are at one. I know it
is always said that the Scotch are practical, prosaic, and puritan; that
they have an eye to business. I like that phrase "an eye" to business.

Polyphemus had an eye for business; it was in the middle of his
forehead. It served him admirably for the only two duties which are
demanded in a modern financier and captain of industry: the two duties
of counting sheep and of eating men. But when that one eye was put out
he was done for. But the Scotch are not one-eyed practical men, though
their best friends must admit that they are occasionally business-like.
They are, quite fundamentally, romantic and sentimental, and this
is proved by the very economic argument that is used to prove their
harshness and hunger for the material. The mass of Scots have accepted
the industrial civilisation, with its factory chimneys and its famine
prices, with its steam and smoke and steel—and strikes. The mass
of the Irish have not accepted it. The mass of the Irish have clung to
agriculture with claws of iron; and have succeeded in keeping it. That
is because the Irish, though far inferior to the Scotch in art and
literature, are hugely superior to them in practical politics. You do
need to be very romantic to accept the industrial civilisation. It does
really require all the old Gaelic glamour to make men think that Glasg