Publication was not due for another fortnight, but an advance copy had been sent already to the Planet by the book's publishers in the hope of an early review.
Coincidence, brain wave, sixth, seventh, eighth, nth sense, had drawn her fingers subconsciously, in semidarkness to this volume. That it was now in her hand was not due to the fact that she had read the title on the cover. The book's coming open at this particular place was less a fruit of chance than of the fact that a marker had been inserted.
A mere glance disclosed that much of page 204 was heavily underscored in red ink.
"The most acute problem of this vexed time is the
ever-growing power of the newspaper press. Legislation
of a drastic kind is needed to cope with certain
newspaper 'bosses' in Great Britain and America and
their combinations, national and international, of
periodicals, agencies, special correspondents and their
sinister antennae, which persistently foul at the source
the wells of truth. So long as the infernal machinery
which creates and molds public opinion and now aspires
to govern the world can be set in motion by the
Luciferian minds which control it, minds whose sole
merit is a prodigious development of the modern business
brain and its infinite capacity for combination and
adjustment, hope of a stable peace on any of the five
continents of this unlucky planet is out of the question.
It cannot be said too often that such an engine as the
