he whole machine
is made to chop up each mind into meaningless fragments and waste the
vast mass even of those. Such a thing as one complete human being
appearing in the press is almost unknown; and when an attempt is made
at it, it necessarily has a certain air of eccentric egotism. That is
a risk which I am obliged to run everywhere in this paper and
especially on this page. As I have said, the whole business of
actually putting a paper together is a new game for me to play, to
amuse my second childhood; and it combines some of the characters of
a jigsaw and a crossword puzzle. But at least I am called upon to do
a great many different sorts of things; and am not tied down to that
trivial specialism of the proletarian press.*

[* March 28, 1925.]

And again

This paper exists to insist on the rights of man; on possessions
that are of much more political importance than the principle of one
man one vote. I am in favour of one man one house, one man one field;
nay I have even advanced the paradox of one man one wife. But I am
almost tempted to add the more ideal fancy of one man one
magazine . . . to say that every citizen ought to have a weekly paper
of this sort to splash about in . . . this kind of scrap book to keep
him quiet.*

[* April 4, 1925.]

G.K. goes on to talk of an old idea of his: that a young journalist
should write one article for the _Church Times_ and another for the
_Pink 'Un_ and then put them into the wrong envelopes.

It is that sort of contrast and that sort of combination that I am
going to aim at in this paper . . . I cannot see why convictions
should look dull or why jokes should be insincere. I should like a
man to pick up this paper for amusement and find himself involved in
an argument. I should like him to pursue it purely for the sake of
argument and find himself pulled up short by a joke . . . I never can
see why a thing should not be both popular and serious; that is, in
the sense of being both popular and sincere.

For the paper had a most serious purpose. He acknowledged its defects
of bad printing (which the printers indignantly denied), bad
proof-reading, bad editing, and claimed "to raise against the banner
of advertisement the noble banner of apology." Because a creative
revolution was what he wanted, words and forms were hard to find. It
was easy to dress up stale ideas in a new dress but th