pretended not to hate even Smillie's interview with the coal dukes. He
applauded when Smillie quoted texts at them. Though I know, of course,
that that sort of thing is mainly a pose on Juke's part, because it
amuses him. Besides, one of the dukes was a cousin of his, who bored him,
so of course he was pleased.

But those texts damned Smillie for ever in my eyes. He had those poor
imbeciles at his mercy--and he gave his whole case away by quoting
irrelevant remarks from ancient Hebrew writers. I wish I had had his
chance for ten minutes; I would have taken it. But the Labour people are
always giving themselves away with both hands to the enemy. I suppose
facts have hit them too hard, and so they shrink away from them--pad them
with sentiment, like uneducated women in villas. They all need--so do the
women--a legal training, to make their minds hard and clear and sharp.
So do journalists. Nearly the whole press is the same, dealing in
emotions and stunts, unable to face facts squarely, in a calm spirit.

It seemed to some of us that spring that there was a chance for
unsentimental journalism in a new paper, that should be unhampered by
tradition. That was why the _Weekly Fact_ (unofficially called the
Anti-Potterite) was started. All the other papers had traditions; their
past principles dictated their future policy. The _Fact_ (except that it
was up against Potterism) was untrammelled; it was to judge of each issue
as it turned up, on its own merits, in the light of fact. That, of
course, was in itself the very essence of anti-Potterism, which was
incapable of judging or considering anything whatever, and whose only
light was a feeble emotionalism The light of fact was to Potterites but a
worse darkness.

The _Fact_ wasn't to be labelled Liberal or Labour or Tory or Democratic