e has an ideal. It may be a mistaken
ideal, but whatever it is, it is a desperate effort to break down a
system which anarchists imagine is at the root of all the bribery,
corruption, flunkeyism and money-grubbing of the world. Moreover, the
Anarchist carries his own life in his hand, and the risk he runs can
scarcely be for his pleasure. Yet he braves everything for the 'ideal,'
which he fancies, if realised, will release others from the yoke of
injustice and tyranny. Few people have any 'ideals' at all
nowadays;--what they want to do is to spend as much as they like, and
eat as much as they can. And the newspapers that persist in chronicling
the amount of their expenditure and the extent of their appetites, are
the real breeders and encouragers of every form of anarchy under the
sun!"

"You may be right," said Helmsley, slowly. "Indeed I fear you are! If
one is to judge by old-time records, it was a kinder, simpler world when
there was no daily press."

"Man is an imitative animal," continued Reay. "The deeds he hears of,
whether good or bad, he seeks to emulate. In bygone ages crime existed,
of course, but it was not blazoned in headlines to the public. Good and
brave deeds were praised and recorded, and as a consequence--perhaps as
a result of imitation--there were many heroes. In our times a good or
brave deed is squeezed into an obscure paragraph,--while intellect and
brilliant talent receive scarcely any acknowledgment--the silly doings
of 'society' and the Court are the chief matter,--hence, possibly, the
preponderance of dunces and flunkeys, again produced by sheer
'imitativeness.' Is it pleasant for a man with starvation at his door,
to read that a king pays two thousand a year to his cook? That same two
thousand comes out of the pockets of the nation--and the starving man
thinks some of it ought to fall in _his_ way instead of providing for a
cooker of royal victuals! There is no end to the mischief generated by
the publication of such snobbish statements, whether true or false. This
was the kind of irresponsible talk that set Jean-Jacques Rousseau
thinking and writing, and kindling the first spark of the fire of the
French Revolution. 'Royal-Flunkey' methods of journalism provoke deep
resentment in the public mind,--for a king after all is only the paid
servant of the people--he is not an idol or a deity to which an
independent nation should for ever crook the knee. And from the
smouldering anger of the mi