Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/287



win his sympathy, and whose ascendancy in his own Cabinet is overshadowed by that of a Secretary of State, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a certain Secretary of State who shall be nameless. This "honorable statesman" is hand-in-glove with an alien journalist, who is described here and there in terms which fit more or less loosely to one or two proprietors of journals of very large circulations in London town. With the aid of this supreme embodiment of the mercenary journalism of our latter day, the Secretary of State conceives the idea of working up a war for the annexation of a small State, whose conquest was certain to increase the value of various shares in which the Secretary and his friends had largely speculated, and further, to extricate them from various political difficulties in which they had found themselves involved.
 * ner is profoundly discouraging to all who seek to

We have Miss Corelli's authority for stating, with all possible emphasis, that "Temporal Power" was written without the least intention on the part of the author to introduce living personalities under a romantic disguise. As touching the character of the defaulting Secretary of State, Carl Perousse, with which a large number of writers (including Mr. Stead) have sought to identify Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, it may be pointed out that if the author had any prominent European statesman at all in view, it was a well-known Italian minister, now deceased, as any one with judgment and knowledge of Italian affairs could testify—though