In the spring, Joan, at Mrs. Denton's request, undertook a mission.
It was to go to Paris. Mrs. Denton had meant to go herself, but was laid up with sciatica; and the matter, she considered, would not brook of any delay.
"It's rather a delicate business," she told Joan. She was lying on a couch in her great library, and Joan was seated by her side. "Iwant someone who can go into private houses and mix with educated people on their own level; and especially I want you to see one or two women: they count in France. You know French pretty well, don't you?""Oh, sufficiently," Joan answered. The one thing her mother had done for her had been to talk French with her when she was a child;and at Girton she had chummed on with a French girl, and made herself tolerably perfect.
"You will not go as a journalist," continued Mrs. Denton; "but as a personal friend of mine, whose discretion I shall vouch for. Iwant you to find out what the people I am sending you among are thinking themselves, and what they consider ought to be done. If we are not very careful on both sides we shall have the newspapers whipping us into war."The perpetual Egyptian trouble had cropped up again and the Carleton papers, in particular, were already sounding the tocsin.
Carleton's argument was that we ought to fall upon France and crush her, before she could develop her supposed submarine menace. His flaming posters were at every corner. Every obscure French newspaper was being ransacked for "Insults and Pinpricks.""A section of the Paris Press is doing all it can to help him, of course," explained Mrs. Denton. "It doesn't seem to matter to them that Germany is only waiting her opportunity, and that, if Russia comes in, it is bound to bring Austria. Europe will pay dearly one day for the luxury of a free Press.""But you're surely not suggesting any other kind of Press, at this period of the world's history?" exclaimed Joan.
"Oh, but I am," answered the old lady with a grim tightening of the lips. "Not even Carleton would be allowed to incite to murder or arson. I would have him prosecuted for inciting a nation to war.""Why is the Press always so eager for war?" mused Joan. "According to their own account, war doesn't pay them.""I don't suppose it does: not directly," answered Mrs. Denton.
"But it helps them to establish their position and get a tighter hold upon the public. War does pay the newspaper in the long run.
The daily newspaper lives on commotion, crime, lawlessness in general. If people no longer enjoyed reading about violence and bloodshed half their occupation, and that the most profitable half would be gone. It is the interest of the newspaper to keep alive the savage in human nature; and war affords the readiest means of doing this. You can't do much to increase the number of gruesome murders and loathsome assaults, beyond giving all possible advertisement to them when they do occur. But you can preach war, and cover yourself with glory, as a patriot, at the same time.""I wonder how many of my ideals will be left to me," sighed Joan.
"I always used to regard the Press as the modern pulpit.""The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power," answered Mrs. Denton. "It originated persecution and inflamed men's passions against one another. It, too, preached war for its own ends, taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime. The Press of to-day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest. It aims at establishing the worst kind of tyranny: the tyranny over men's minds. They pretend to fight among themselves, but it's rapidly becoming a close corporation.
The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the Union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be squeezed out. Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press. It will one day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan cardinals."Joan laughed. "I can see Carleton rather fancying himself in a tiara," she said. "I must tell Phillips what you say. He's out for a fight with him. Government by Parliament or Government by Press is going to be his war cry.""Good man," said Mrs. Denton. "I'm quite serious. You tell him from me that the next revolution has got to be against the Press.
And it will be the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had."The old lady had tired herself. Joan undertook the mission. She thought she would rather enjoy it, and Mrs. Denton promised to let her have full instructions. She would write to her friends in Paris and prepare them for Joan's coming.
Joan remembered Folk, the artist she had met at Flossie's party, who had promised to walk with her on the terrace at St. Germain, and tell her more about her mother. She looked up his address on her return home, and wrote to him, giving him the name of the hotel in the Rue de Grenelle where Mrs. Denton had arranged that she should stay. She found a note from him awaiting her when she arrived there. He thought she would like to be quiet after her journey. He would call round in the morning. He had presumed on the privilege of age to send her some lilies. They had been her mother's favourite flower. "Monsieur Folk, the great artist," had brought them himself, and placed them in her dressing-room, so Madame informed her.
It was one of the half-dozen old hotels still left in Paris, and was built round a garden famous for its mighty mulberry tree. She breakfasted underneath it, and was reading there when Folk appeared before her, smiling and with his hat in his hand. He excused himself for intruding upon her so soon, thinking from what she had written him that her first morning might be his only chance. He evidently considered her remembrance of him a feather in his cap.