All told, the mail room left on me the most happy impression. As the finished paper is spat out in elevens every one second, it is taken on conveyor belts from the press to the mail room for bundling in proper numbers, then for tying, and finally the bundles are carried on endless belts to trucks waiting outside to make delivery to newstands and the five hundred newsboys serving the two counties. The entire operation is automatic, swift, smooth and seemingly endless to watch. Here, I told my hosts, was something we could certainly do with in my native land.

Pleasant as my stay at The Home News was, one or two minor incidents occurred that more or less clogged for me its oiled flow. The first, very slight and unnoticed by anyone, was my meeting in the cafeteria with a well-groomed capsulesized youth.

‘Come and meet our guest from Nigeria,’ the gentleman who was standing me lunch called out to him. ‘This is Boyd Junior, our President’s son,’ he told me. We shook hands, a bit limply perhaps, and Boyd Junior walked away immediately to collect his meal.

‘I thought he was one of your cub reporters,’ I said, looking at the young man now part of the general body of workers jostling for their lunch.

‘Well, so he is,’ my friend said simply, ‘but only for a short time. He’s doing the rounds before he takes over from his father as president and publisher.’

I said: ‘How nice!’

Finally, it was time to say farewell, although John said it would form a perfect finish if I could return that night to watch how the newspaper was going to cover the results of the elections which had taken place that day. We agreed to wait on the weather. In the meantime, he took me in his car to catch the bus at a point from where he collected me each day. But as usual, the bus didn’t seem to be coming according to schedule. So we got out of the cold air and of our damp overcoats into the warmth of a coffee shop by the road side. John ordered cups for us two, and there in the smoky shop we complimented ourselves for a good meeting, adding in the process more smoke clouds from our lungs to that already floating in the room. Feeling at that moment more than close to the man, I pointed to a block of buildings overlooking the place. A lot of black folks seemed to come in and out of there.

‘Are there many coloured people in New Brunswick?’ I asked.

‘Oh, quite a number.’

‘And how are they?’

‘We are doing a lot for them,’ John said warmly. ‘Why, look at the new blocks by the river. You ought to come again so I can take you to see them. The Home News did a lot of fighting to have the development of the place carried out by the city council. Oh, it should ease the Negro lot a great deal, and there is more we want to do for them.’

I felt the coffee turn clayish on my tongue. Poor blacks, I contained my thoughts, they don’t even form part of their own society. Like children or aliens, things usually are done for them. Whenever the adults and patrons are so willing and in the mood to be generous, then a little gift or concession here and there for these helpless and powerless. I did not want to prick the expansive balloon or bubble of my fine host, so climbing down the tall stool I sat on, I spotted the bus just then pulling to a stop outside in the drift, and said as sincerely as I could: ‘Goodbye old fellow, and thanks for everything.’

There was a comic epilogue to my Home News visit. Several days after, I got a letter from John. Part of it was the house magazine of some alumni association somewhere in the State of New Jersey. It carried a lead story captioned ‘Letter from Lagos’ as sent home by one of their far-ranging members, a Jesuit father. And there on the cover, as large as life, against a map of Western Nigeria, was a white-over-black photograph of its author, in all the habits and humility of his order, telling the story of that unending mission to bring light to yet another dark people.

The Washington Post after The Home News, was like going from a shop in New York’s lower east side to a departmental store like Lord and Taylor on Fifth Avenue. Of course the smooth, endless machinery appears the same, the same material is mixed and served to a mass public, and the men are the same ants all over again, walking over one another in the rush and push to make the grade. Only the display of wares shows louder, the size of market larger, and the managers get more and more involved with the business of creating and directing tastes and fashion both at home and abroad. This is more so with The Washington Post, as the paper tries to do what even the New York Times in all its volumes and verbiage still sees as a fond hope – serving as the national newspaper of a country that is really a continent.

A strange club of several disparate members, each with his own rash of communication organs to preach, represent, and uphold the dignity and inalienable rights of every American, that is, the property owner – the Union that Lincoln saved still lacks one such common institution as found in smaller and more compact countries. So publishing in the federal capital where the president of the club, with all the cohorts of chucker-outs at his command, is bravely doing his best to defend and protect a constitution about which no two members of the club agree, The Washington Post assumes a role and a tone, that, one may venture to say at this safe distance, are not altogether in keeping with the paper’s actual stature and performance. My visit to that establishment therefore proved more than just an advance from the relatively pioneering business at home to the limitless confines and resources of a corporation; my journey there became something of a pilgrimage and I was glad when it was over.

Lunch, after a dizzy tour of the place conducted by a young reporter, who said he was doing research into the communication methods and habits of the Ibo people in Nigeria, was a high-powered affair, in one of those gleaming dining-rooms that together with a complete kitchen service form a healthy appendage of every American establishment worthy to be called a corporation. The managing editor, Mr Alfred Friendly, a most friendly host, took me up and introduced me to his colleagues, a whole circle of them. Their names and positions soon ceased to matter in the clatter of silver and tabletalk. At the head of table sat a distinguished gentleman who I thought was the great Phil Graham himself, owner by marriage and more of the establishment. Beginning with him, flanked on one side by a young lady staff member and on the other by the day’s guest, who happened to be me, and going up to the managing editor at the other end of the table, and then finally to the rest of the exclusive group filling in both sides, all of this apparently according to some pre-ordained arrangement, the black anonymous housekeeper served us hot toasted grape fruit, followed this with the main dish of steak and something, offered dessert which I declined, and finally rich black coffee of which everybody took a generous helping. It was quite a ritual, with a rising cross-current of dialogue and chorus to it, and she alone, the one that mattered, playing a dumb part.

Earlier, in the elevator going up, I had started what turned out to be a proper prologue.

‘I have a letter for the editor,’ I said.

‘Oh, have you? And where is it?’ Mr Friendly asked in his warm baritone voice, crushing like gravel in a barrel rolling down a road.

‘I still have to write it!’ I laughed.

‘Please do, but what on?’

‘You carried a news-story about Nigeria on your main features page yesterday.’

‘Oh yes, about the emergency situation up there in the Western State.’

‘Western Region,’ I began.

‘Oh, yes, Western Region of Nigeria. Very interesting development that.’

‘Yes, but it’s six months’ old.’

‘Really? What about the treason trials?’

‘Those have just come up and take barely a couple of paragraphs in your story, which I must say you gave a good amount of space.’

‘Well, we are trying the best we can to cover Africa.’

‘You mean the Congo Republic and Algeria, and perhaps Nasser and Nkrumah –’

‘Well, we are doing the best we can. That story you spoke of, for instance, was filed by our own man in West Africa stationed at Dakar. He’s a very well-known correspondent.’

‘Undoubtedly!’ I agreed. ‘I remember the fellow was thrown out of Ghana and some other place.’

At this point, a curtain of silence fell between, which did not lift until we were inside and had fallen on the fare.

‘Mr Clark, what did you think of the Cuban crisis?’

‘Think?’ I looked up. So sudden had come the question and such was the short-circuit way it charged the room, for a time I paused palpably between the food going at that moment into my mouth and the words that everybody had stopped and was waiting to hear come out of there.

‘Think?’ I repeated. ‘But was there room to think?’

‘Oh, come come,’ gurgled the distinguished gentleman at the head of the table, for it was he who had popped the question on me. ‘Surely,’ he went on, ‘you must have reacted in some way. Why, the world was on the very brink of total nuclear war in those first days when Russian ships kept steaming towards the cordon of quarantine the US had thrown about Cuba. Don’t tell me you slept through it all.’

‘Well, surprising as it may seem,’ I began, finding passage at last for words and food, ‘I slept quite soundly in the thick of the crisis.’

‘How was that?’ several voices spouted.

‘Oh, simple. I never for one moment believed Kennedy and Kruschev would actually blow themselves up. Both men are too proud of their western civilization and its great achievements to want to blow it up.’

Return of silver to plates and the shift of chairs forward and back provided the only sound of life for a good number of seconds. And I think Mr Friendly in his warm open voice growled something about that being a swell thought to go to bed on, although it turned out none would let the matter lie there.

‘But what did you think of the US at that time? Did you think the President had done right declaring the quarantine?’ urged my distinguished host who, I came to know, was Mr Wiggins, the editorial page boss.

‘Remember, those missiles in Cuba meant the Reds were within a striking reach of Washington, New York, and even Chicago and San Francisco,’ another, the man to my right, added.

‘But you forget you have bases encircling Russia all the way from Iceland to Okinawa,’ I ventured to point out.

‘Nonsense, those have been there all along.’ Someone snorted across the table.

‘Cuba was just one against scores,’ I insisted.

‘That one base, as you put it, completely upset the balance of power against the Free World.’

‘Hence it was worth taking the risk of war involving all the world?’

‘That’s a good question,’ Mr Wiggins laughed, taking the steam off the air which by now was quite missile-charged.

‘I think Phil Graham asked the President just that one question, didn’t he, Alf?’