The Fact wasn’t to be labelled Liberal or Labour or Tory or Democratic or anti-Democratic or anything at all.  All these things were to vary with the immediate occasions.  I know it sounds like Lloyd George, but there were at least two very important differences between the Fact and the Prime Minister.  One was that the Fact employed experts who always made a very thorough and scientific investigation of every subject it dealt with before it took up a line; it cared for the truth and nothing but the truth.  The other was that the Fact took in nearly every case the less popular side, not, of course, because it was less popular (for to do that would have been one of the general principles of which we tried to steer clear), but it so happened that we came to the conclusion nearly always that the majority were wrong.  The fact is that majorities nearly always are.  The heart of the people may be usually in the right place (though, personally, I doubt this, for the heart of man is corrupt) but their head can, in most cases, be relied on to be in the wrong one.  This is an important thing for statesmen to remember; forgetfulness of it has often led to disaster; ignorance of it has created Potterism as an official faith.

Anyhow, the Fact (again unlike the Prime Minister) could afford to ignore the charges of flightiness and irresponsibility which, of course, were flung at it.  It could afford to ignore them because of the good and solid excellence of its contents, and the reputations of many of its contributors.  And that, of course, was due to the fact that it had plenty of money behind it.  A great many people know who backs the Fact, but, all the same, I cannot, of course, give away this information to the public.  I will only say that it started with such a good financial backing that it was able to afford the best work, able even to afford the truth.  Most of the good weeklies, certainly, speak the truth as they see it; they are, in fact, a very creditable section of our press; but the idea of the Fact was to be absolutely unbiased on each issue that turned up by anything it had ever thought before.  Of course, you may say that a man will be likely, when a case comes before his eyes, to come to the same conclusion about it that he came to about a similar case not long before.  But, as a matter of fact, it is surprising how some slight difference in the circumstances of a case may, if a man keeps an open mind, alter his whole judgment of it.  The Fact was a scientific, not a sentimental paper.  If our investigations led us into autocracy, we were to follow them there; if to a soviet state, still we were to follow them.  And we might support autocracy in one state and soviets in another, if it seemed suitable.  Again this sounds like some of our more notorious politicians—­Carson, for instance; but the likeness is superficial.

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