at
ten that night, to be greeted by a room full of press men. When the
female reporters begin by saying to me:

"What, Mrs. Asquith, do you think, with your close acquaintance with the
many trends of the working of a woman's mind, of the modern probability
etc., etc.," I am reminded of Sir Walter Raleigh's excellent phrase,
"Stumbling upwards into vacuity."

One of these eager ladies, checking her more intelligent male
companions, said:

"Tell me, Mrs. Asquith, is it not true that you are indifferent to the
opinion of any living person and enjoy saying smart and daring things?"
I replied:

"Indeed no! I leave that to you."

I told them about MacKenzie King, of whom they had never heard, and what
Mr. Horton and I had observed in our travels of the abominable
consequences of Prohibition. I said it was a measure of such exaggerated
interference with private liberty that no truthful person could call
America a free country.

On my arrival I found many letters from England on the political crisis;
and if I can judge at such a distance, the Coalition seems doomed.

Believing as I always have in party government as the best solution for
democracy, I think Sir George Younger deserves a Victoria Cross, and it
will be interesting to see how many of the timid Conservatives will
regain sufficient courage to follow him. The mischief that is being made
between my husband and Lord Grey leaves me cold.

Their friendship is not of a kind to be easily severed, and the House of
Lords and the House of Commons are separate institutions.

Trammelled as I have always been by an unfortunate combination of
truthfulness and impatience, and exhausted by the journey of eighteen
hours, I was afraid I had been neither genial nor informing to the
reporters upon my arrival in New York, but on looking at the papers next
morning I found they had treated me with friendliness and courtesy.

Journalism over here is not only an obsession but a drawback that cannot
be over-rated. Politicians are frightened of the press, and in the same
way as bull-fighting has a brutalising effect upon Spain (of which she
is unconscious), headlines of murder, rape, and rubbish, excite and
demoralise the American public.

I would like to make it clear that it is not the reporters but the
owners of the papers that should be censured. With the exception of a
few garrulous and gushing geese, who think it smart to ask pert and
meaningless questions, the male reporte