e increase of
violence. Police had actually been killed and the riot leaders were on
trial. Presently he came to lesser matters.

"Sedition," said he, passing them in review, "is now openly preached
every week in the _Women's War Cry_."

"Why do you not suppress it?" inquired the King.

"It is difficult to do that, sir, without disturbing trade. The paper is
highly offensive and seditious; but it has an enormous advertising
interest at its back, and so we don't like to touch it. When
shop-looting began three years ago as a form of political propaganda it
was noticed that those firms which advertised in the _Women's War Cry_
escaped the attentions of the rioters. Immediately the rush to advertise
in its pages became tremendous--especially as further loots were then
threatening. It has now some forty pages of advertisement and can afford
in consequence to retain upon its staff the best journalists and
critical writers of the day. Its _War Cry_, printed separately, inserted
as a loose supplement, and with the statement 'given gratis' stamped
across it in red ink, occupies a comparatively small portion of its
space; all the rest is advertisement and high-class journalism. The
circulation has gone up by leaps and bounds, and the profits are very
considerable. If we prosecuted we might only find that in law the two
portions were wholly distinct and independent of each other (I am told
that they have even different printers), and the failure of the Crown's
case would be a blow to the prestige of the Government; while if we
succeeded altogether in suppressing it we should be more unpopular with
the great middle-class trade interests than we are already."

"Why should you try to be popular?" inquired the King.

"A Government cannot exist upon air," remarked the Prime Minister; "and,
after all, we do endeavor to deal fairly by all the interests which go
to make up the prosperity of the country."

"You mean the trade prosperity?"

The Prime Minister did; but he did not like it to be stated thus baldly.
"I was only wondering," went on the King, "what price you were prepared
to pay for it. We must tolerate sedition, it seems; must we also, in the
same interest, encourage disease?"

"I fear that I do not follow your Majesty's argument."

"I was merely recalling what the Prince told me for a fact just before I
went abroad. He had been informed of it by a social worker who gave him
chapter and verse. Two years ago the medical