The editor must be back by now.  Calm and decisive, he takes his seat in his own room, like the conductor of an orchestra preparing to raise his baton now that the tuning-up is finished.  The leader-writers are coming in for their instructions.  No need for much consultation to-night—­not for the first leader anyhow.  For the second—­well, there are a good many things one could suggest:  Turkey or Persia or the eternal German Dreadnought for a foreign subject; the stage censorship or the price of cotton; and the cup-ties, or the extinction of hats for both sexes as a light note to finish with.  He’s always labouring to invent “something light,” is the editor.  He says we must sometimes consider the public; just as though we wrote the rest of the paper for our own private fun.

But there’s no doubt about the first leader to-night.  There’s only one subject on which it would be a shock to every reader in the morning not to find it written.  And, my word! what a subject it is!  What seriousness and indignation and conviction one could get into it!  I should begin by restating the situation.  You must always assume that the reader’s ignorance is new every morning, as love should be; and anyone who happens to know something about it likes to see he was right.  I should work in adroit references to this evening’s speeches, and that would fill the first paragraph—­say, three sides of my copy, or something over.  In the second paragraph I’d show the immense issues involved in the present contest, and expose the fallacies of our opponents who attempt to belittle the matter as temporary and unlikely to recur—­say, three sides of my copy again, but not a word more.  And, then, in the third paragraph, I’d adjure the Government, in the name of all their party hold sacred, to stand firm, and I’d appeal to the people of this great Empire never to allow their ancient liberties to be encroached upon or overridden by a set of irresponsible—­well, in short, I should be like General Sherman when at the crisis of a battle he used to say, “Now, let everything go in”—­four sides of my copy, or even five if the stuff is running well.

Somebody must be writing that leader now.  Possibly he is doing it better than I should, but I hope not.  When Hannibal wandered all those years in Asia at the Court of silly Antiochus this or stupid Prusias the other, and knew that Carthage was falling to ruin while he alone might have saved her if only she had allowed him, would he have rejoiced to hear that someone else was succeeding better than himself—­had traversed the Alps with a bigger army, had won a second Cannae, and even at Zama snatched a decisive victory?  Hannibal might have rejoiced.  He was a very exceptional man.