What Not: A Prophetic Comedy, Page 2

  CHAPTER I

  THE MINISTRY

  1

  After the Great War (but I do not say how long after), when the tumultand the shouting had died, and those who were left of the captains andthe kings had gone either home or to those obscure abodes selected forthem by their more successful fellows (to allay anxiety, I hasten tomention that three one-time Emperors were among those thus relegated todistance and obscurity), and humanity, released from its long torment,peered nervously into a future darkly divined (nervously, and yetcuriously, like a man long sick who has just begun to get about againand cannot yet make anything coherent of the strange, disquieting,terrifying, yet enchanting jumble which breaks upon his restoredconsciousness)--while these things happened, the trains still ranthrough the Bakerloo tube, carrying people to their day's work.

  Compartments in tube trains are full of variety and life--more so thanin trains above ground, being more congested, and having straps, also noclass snobbery. Swaying on adjacent straps were a fluffy typist, reading"The Love He Could Not Buy," in the _Daily Mirror_, a spruce young civilservant on his way to the Foreign Office, reading _The Times_, aclergyman reading the _Challenge_, who looked as if he was interested inthe Life and Liberty movement, another clergyman reading the _Guardian_,who looked as if he wasn't, an elderly gentleman reading the _MorningPost_, who looked patriotic but soured, as if he had volunteered forNational Service during the Great War and had found it disappointing, ayoung man reading the _Post-War_, the alert new daily, and a citizenwith a law-abiding face very properly perusing the _Hidden Hand_. The_Hidden Hand_ was the Government daily paper. Such a paper had for longbeen needed; it is difficult to understand why it was not started longago. All other papers are so unreliable, so tiresome; a government musthave one paper on which it can depend for unfailing support. So here wasthe _Hidden Hand_, and its readers had no excuse for ignorance of whatthe government desired them to think about its own actions.

  The carriage was full of men and women going to their places ofbusiness. There were tired young men, lame young men, pale and scarredyoung men, brown and fit young men, bored and _blase_ young men, jollyand amused young men, and nearly all, however brown or fit or pale orlanguid or jolly or bored, bore a peculiar and unmistakable impressstamped, faintly or deeply, on their faces, their eyes, their carriage,the set of their shoulders.

  There were, among the business men and girls, women going shopping,impassive, without newspapers, gazing at the clothes of others, takingin their cost, their cut, their colour. This is an engrossingoccupation. Those who practise it sit quite still, without a stir, atwinkle, a yawn, or a paper, and merely look, all over, up and down,from shoes to hat.... They are a strange and wonderful race of beings,these gazing women; one cannot see into their minds, or beyond theirroving eyes. They bear less than any other section of the community thestamp of public events. The representatives of the type in the Bakerloothis morning did not carry any apparent impress of the Great War. Itwould take something more than a great war, something more even than afood crisis, to leave its mark on these sphinx-like and immobilecountenances. Kingdoms may rise and fall, nations may reel in thedeath-grapple, but they sit gazing still, and their minds, amid therocking chaos, may be imagined to be framing some such thoughts asthese: "Those are nice shoes. I wonder if they're the ones Swan andEdgar have at 30s. She's trimmed her hat herself, and not well. Thatskirt is last year's shape. That's a smart coat. Dear me, whatstockings; you'd think anyone would be ashamed."

  These women had not the air of reckless anticipation, of being alert forany happening, however queer, that, in differing degrees, marked themajority of people in these days. For that, in many, seemed theprevailing note; a series of events so surprising as to kill surprise,of disasters so appalling as to numb horror, had come and gone, leavingbehind them this reckless touch, and with it a kind of greed, adetermination to snatch whatever might be from life before it tumbledagain into chaos. They had not been devoid of lessons in what moralistscall Making the Best of It, those staggering years when everything hadfallen and fallen, successively and simultaneously, civilisation, andgovernments, and hopes, and crowns, and nations, and soldiers, and rain,and tears, and bombs, and buildings, only not prices, or newspapers.

  For, if everything had so fallen once, it might even now be riding for afall again (in spite of the League of Nations and other devices forpropping up the unsteady framework of a lasting peace). The thing was toget what one could first. The thing, in the opinion of one traveller inthat train, was to wear cap and bells, to dance through life to a barrelorgan, to defeat a foolish universe with its own weapons.

  And always there was that sense in the background of a possible greatdisaster, of dancing on the world's thin crust that had broken once andlet one through, and might break again. Its very thinness, its veryfragility added a desperate gaiety to the dance.

  2

  Ivy Delmer (who was not the traveller alluded to above, and did notconsciously think or feel any of these things) stood holding to a strap,with the novel which she was going to change in the lunch hour in onehand. Ivy Delmer, a shorthand typist at the Ministry of Brains, wasyoung, ingenuous, soft-faced, naive, and the daughter of aBuckinghamshire vicar. The two things she loved best in the world weremarzipan and the drama. Her wide grey eyes travelled, with innocentinterest, along the faces in the compartment; she was seeing if sheliked them or not. Immaturely and unconsciously sexual, she looked withmore hope of satisfaction at male faces than at female. Not but that shewas susceptible to strong admirations for her own sex; she had a "pash"for Miss Doris Keane and Miss Teddie Gerrard, and, in private life, agreat esteem for Miss Grammont, at the Ministry, whose letters shesometimes took down in shorthand. But everyone knows there is a greaternumber of interesting faces in trains belonging to another sex than toone's own, and it is no use pretending.

  Having subjected the faces within her range to her half-unconsciousjudgment, and passed them with varying degrees of credit, Miss Delmer,for lack of anything better to do, read the advertisements andexhortations over the windows. With satisfaction she noted that she hadseen all the advertised plays. She absorbed such temporal maxims andeternal truths as "Let Mr. Mustard mix your bath," "God is not mocked,"and the terrifying utterances of the Safety-if-Possible Council, "Is itsafe? That is the question. No. That is the answer." "If you hope toachieve safety in a street aero (1) Do not alight before the aero does.(2) Do not attempt to jump up into an aero in motion." Then a picture:"A will be killed because he is standing immediately beneath adescending aero bus. B will be killed because he and others like himhave shaken the nerve of the aviator." A series of warnings which leftone certain that, wherever one might achieve safety, it would not be in,or anywhere at all near, a street aero. That, probably, is the object.In the old days it was the motor bus that was thus made a thing ofterror by the princes of the nether world. Now, even as then, theirefforts met with success, and the tubes were filled with apanic-stricken mob.

  Ivy Delmer, taking an empty seat, saw Miss Grammont at the other side ofthe carriage. Miss Grammont had the _New Statesman_ and the _Tatler_ andwas reading one of them. She was partial to both, which wascharacteristic of her attitude towards life. She was one of those whosee no reason why an intelligent interest in the affairs of the worldshould be incompatible with a taste for Eve. She enjoyed both classicalconcerts and new revues. She might be called a learned worldling. IvyDelmer was rather shy of her, because of her manner, which could besupercilious, because of her reputed cleverness, and because of herposition at the Ministry, which was a long way above Ivy's. On the otherhand, her clothes made one feel at home; they showed skill and interest;she had not that air of the dowd which some people who have been tocollege have, and which is so estranging to normal people.

  Kitty Grammont, something of the elegant rake, something of the gamin,something of the adventuress, something of the scholar, with innocentamber-brown eyes gazing ingenuously from under long black lashes, aslightly cynical mouth, a sma
ll, smooth, rounded, child's face, atravelled manner, and an excellent brain, was adequately, as people go,equipped for the business of living. She had seen some life, in a pastwhich, if chequered, had not lacked its gaiety, meant to see much more,in a future which she did not foresee clearly but which she intendedshould be worthy of her, and was seeing enough to go on with in apresent which, though at moments it blackly bored her (she was verysusceptible to boredom), was on the whole decidedly entertaining.

  Ivy Delmer, looking at her across the compartment, with some surprisebecause she was so nearly punctual this morning, this not being one ofher habits, admired her greatly, thinking how clever she was, howclearly, how unhesitatingly, how incisively her sentences came out whenshe was dictating, cutting their way, in that cool, light, draggingvoice of hers, through her subject, however intricate, as a sharp bladecuts ice; quite different from some people's dictation, which trails toand fro, emending, cancelling, hesitating, indistinct, with no edge toit, so that one's shorthand has constantly to be altered, making a messon the page, and bits of it read aloud to see how it goes now, which wasa nuisance, because one can't rely always on being able to read off evenone's own shorthand quite fluently straight away like that. Further--andthis was nearer Ivy's heart--Miss Grammont wore, as a rule, charmingshoes. She also smoked extraordinarily nice cigarettes, and often haddelicious chocolates, and was generous with both.

  All this made it a grief to Ivy Delmer that Miss Grammont's brother andhis family, who lived in her father's parish, and with whom MissGrammont often stayed, were not Approved Of. Into the reasons for thisit will be more appropriate to enter later in this narrative.

  3

  Oxford Circus. The hub of the world, where seething mobs fought on theplatform like wild beasts. Piccadilly Circus. Lucky people, thought IvyDelmer, who got out there, all among gaiety and theatres. TrafalgarSquare. There naval officers got out, to visit the Admiralty, or theNelson Column. Charing Cross. There people had got out during the GreatWar, to go and help the War Office or the Ministry of Munitions to runthe business. So much help, so much energy, so many hotels.... And nowthere were more than ever, because so much needed doing, and hotels arethe means heaven has given us to do it with.

  At Charing Cross Ivy Delmer and Kitty Grammont got out, for, withoutspecifying the hotel where the Ministry of Brains carried on itslabours, it may be mentioned without indiscretion that it was within awalk of Charing Cross.

  Miss Grammont and Miss Delmer walked there, Miss Delmer well ahead andhurrying, because to her it seemed late, Miss Grammont behind andsauntering because to her it seemed superfluously early. The Ministrydaily day began at 9.30, and it was only 9.40 now.

  The summer morning was glittering on the river like laughter. A foolishthing it seemed, to be going into an hotel on a summer morning, to besitting down at a government desk laden with government files, taking agovernment pen (which was never a relief, only a not-exactly) andwriting pamphlets, or answers to letters which, if left long enough,would surely answer themselves, as is the way of letters, and all toimprove the Brains of the Nation. Bother the Brains of the Nation,thought Miss Grammont, only she used a stronger word, as was the customin what Mrs. Delmer called her unfortunate family. Black doubt sometimessmote her as to not so much the efficacy of the work of her Departmentas its desirability if ever it should be perfectly accomplished. Didbrains matter so greatly after all? Were the clever happier than thefools? Miss Grammont, whose university career had been a brilliantintellectual adventure, felt competent to speak for both these types ofhumanity. She knew herself to be happier when playing the fool than whenexerting her highly efficient brain; the lunatic-asylum touch gave hermore joy than the studious, and she wore learning like a cap and bells.But stupidity was, of course, a bore. It must, of course, be mitigated,if possible. And anyhow the object of the Ministry of Brains was not tomake people happy (that could be left to the Directorate ofEntertainments), nor to make them good (that was up to the Church, now,to the great benefit of both, divorced from the State), but to furthersocial progress and avert another Great War.

  Miss Grammont yawned, because the day was yet so young, and followedMiss Delmer up the steps of the hotel.

  4

  The Ministry of Brains, a vast organisation, had many sections. Therewas the Propaganda Section, which produced pamphlets and organisedlectures and cinema shows (Miss Grammont had been lent temporarily tothis section by her own branch); there was the Men's Education Section,the Women's, and the Children's; the Section which dealt withbrain-tests, examinations, certificates, and tribunals, and the Sectionwhich was concerned with the direction of the intellects of the GreatUnborn. Ivy Delmer was attached to this section, and Mr. Delmer, when heheard about it, was not altogether sure it was quite nice for her.

  "She surely shouldn't know they have any," he had said to his wife, whowas weeding, and replied absently, "Any what, dear? Who?"

  "Intellects," the vicar said. "The Unborn. Besides, they haven't." Hewas frowning, and jerking out dandelions from the lawn with a spud.

  "Oh, that's not it, dear," Mrs. Delmer reassured him vaguely. "Not the_just_ unborn, you know. The--the ever so long unborn. All thisarrangement of who ought to marry who. Quite silly, of course, but noharm for Ivy in that way. After all, there's no reason why she shouldn'tknow that children often inherit their brains from their parents."

  The vicar admitted that, even for their precious and very young Ivy,there was no great harm in this.

  The Section in question was, as Mrs. Delmer had stated, concerned withthe encouragement and discouragement of alliances in proportion as theyseemed favourable or otherwise to the propagation of intelligence in thenext generation. There were numerous and complicated regulations on thesubject, which could not, of course, be enforced; the Ministry's methodswere those of stimulation, reward and punishment, rather than ofcoercion. There were bonuses on the births of the babies of parentsconforming to the regulations, and penal taxes on unregulated infants,taxes increasing in proportion to the flagrancy of the parents'disobedience, so that the offspring of parents of very low mentalcalibre brought with them financial ruin. Everyone held a Ministry ofBrains form, showing his or her mental category, officially ascertainedand registered. If you were classified A, your brains were certified tobe of the highest order, and you were recommended to take a B2 or B3partner (these were the quite intelligent). To ally yourself withanother A or a B1 was regarded as wasteful, there not being nearlyenough of these to go round, and your babies would receive much smallerbonuses. If you were classed C1, C2, or C3, your babies would receive noencouragement, unless you had diluted their folly with an A partner; ifyou chose to unite with another C they were heavily fined, and if youwere below C3 (i.e. uncertificated) they were fined still more heavily,by whomsoever diluted, and for the third and subsequent infants bornunder such conditions you would be imprisoned. (Only the Ministry hadnot been working long enough for anyone to have yet met with this fate.The children of unions perpetrated before the Mental Progress Act wereat present exempt.) Families among the lower grades and among theuncertificated were thus drastically discouraged. You wereuncertificated for matrimonial purposes not only if you were verystupid, but if, though yourself of brilliant mental powers, you hadactual deficiency in your near family. If you were in this case, yourform was marked "A (Deficiency)."

  And so on: the details of the regulations, their intricacies and tangledknots, the endless and complicated special arrangements which were madewith various groups and classes of persons, may be easily imagined, or(rather less easily, because the index is poor) found in the manyvolumes of the Ministry of Brains Instructions.

  Anyhow, to room number 13, which was among the many rooms where thisvast and intricate subject was dealt with, Ivy Delmer was summoned thisMonday morning to take down a letter for Vernon Prideaux.

  5

  Vernon Prideaux was a fair, slim, neat, eye-glassed young man; hisappearance and manners were approved by Ivy Delmer's standards and hiscap
abilities by the heads of his department. His intellectual categorywas A; he had an impatient temper, a ready tongue, considerable powerover papers (an important gift, not possessed by all civil servants),resource in emergency, competence in handling situations and persons,decided personal charm, was the son of one of our more notoriouspoliticians, and had spent most of the war in having malaria on theStruma front, with one interesting break when he was recalled to Englandby his former department to assist in the drawing up of a new Bill,dealing with a topic on which he was an expert. He was, after all this,only thirty now, so had every reason for believing, as he did, that hewould accomplish something in this world before he left it. He had beensucked into the activities of the new Ministry like so many other ableyoung men and women, and was finding it both entertaining and not devoidof scope for his talents.

  Ivy Delmer admired him a good deal. She sat at his side with hernotebook and pencil, her soft, wide mouth a little parted, waiting forhim to begin. He was turning over papers impatiently. He was in a ratherbad temper, because of his new secretary, of whom he only demanded alittle common sense and did not get it, and he would have to get rid ofher, always a tiresome process. He couldn't trust her with anything,however simple; she always made a hash of it, and filled up the gaps,which were profound, in her recollection of his instructions with herown ideas, which were not. He had on Saturday given her some forms tofill up, stock forms which were always sent in reply to a particularkind of letter from the public. The form was supposed merely to say, "Inreply to your letter with reference to your position as regards the tax[or bonus] on your prospective [or potential, or existing] infant, I amto inform you that your case is one for the decision of the LocalTribunals set up under the Mental Progress Act, to whom your applicationshould have been made." Miss Pomfrey, who was young and full of zeal forthe cause (she very reasonably wished that the Mental Progress Act hadbeen in existence before _her_ parents had married), had added on herown account to one such letter, "It was the stupidity of people like youwho caused the Great War," and put it this morning with the other formson Prideaux's table for signing. Prideaux had enquired, fighting againstwhat he knew to be a disproportionate anger with her, didn't she reallyknow better by now than to think that letters like that would be sent?Miss Pomfrey had sighed. She did not know better than that by now. Sheknew hardly anything. She was not intelligent, even as B3's went. Infact, her category was probably a mistake. Her babies, if ever she hadany, would be of a mental calibre that did not bear contemplation. Theywould probably cause another Great War.

  So Prideaux, who had also other worries, was out of temper.

  "Sorry, Miss Delmer.... Ah, here we are." He fidgeted about with a file,then began to dictate a letter, in his quick, light, staccato voice.Ivy, clenching the tip of her pink tongue between her teeth, raced afterhim.

  "Sir,

  "In reply to your letter of 26th May with reference to the taxation on babies born to your employees and their consequent demand for increased wages, I am instructed by the Minister of Brains to inform you that this point is receiving his careful attention, in connection with the general economic question involved by the terms of Ministry of Brains Instruction 743, paragraph 3...."

  Prideaux paused, and frowned nervously at his secretary, who wasconducting a fruitless conversation over his telephone, an occupation atwhich she did not shine.

  "Hullo ... yes ... I can't quite hear ... who are you, please?... Oh ...yes, he's here.... But rather busy, you know.... Dictating.... Yes,_dictating_.... _Who_ did you say wanted him, please?... Oh, I see...."

  "What is it, Miss Pomfrey?" Prideaux broke in, making her start.

  "It's the Minister's secretary," she explained, without covering thereceiver. "He says will you go to the Minister. There's a deputation--ofbishops, I think he said. About the new Instruction about Clergymen'sBabies.... But I said you were busy dictating...."

  Prideaux had jumped to his feet, frowning, and was at the door.

  "You'd better make a note that I'm never busy dictating or doinganything else when the Minister sends for me," he shot at her as he leftthe room.

  "And now he's cross," Miss Pomfrey murmured sadly.

  "I daresay he's only angry at being interrupted," said Ivy Delmer, whohad been at the same secretarial college as Miss Pomfrey and thoughtthat her days in the Ministry of Brains were numbered.

  "I _do_ make him cross," Miss Pomfrey observed, accepting the fact withresignation, as one of the sad, inevitable fatalities of life, andreturned to her indexing. She had been set to make an index of thoseMinistry of Brains Instructions which had come out that month. She hadonly got to the 11th of the month. The draught fluttered the pagesabout. Ivy Delmer watched the Instructions waving to and fro in thebreeze--number 801, Agriculturists, 798, Conscientious Obstructionists,897, Residents in Ireland, 674, Parents of more than three children....How many there were, thought Ivy, as she watched. How clever the peoplewho dealt with such things needed to be. She thought of her father'svillage, and the people in it, the agriculturists, the parents of morethan three children, all the little human community of lives who wereintimately affected by one or other of these instructions, and thefluttering pages emerged from the dry realm to which such as Ivyrelegate printed matter and ideas, and took vivid human life. Itmattered, all this complicated fabric of regulations and rules andagreements and arrangements; it touched the living universe that sheknew--the courting boys and girls on stiles in Buckinghamshire lanes,Emmeline, the Vicarage housemaid, who had married Sid Dean last month,Mr. and Mrs. White at the farm, all the great stupid pathetic aggrievedpublic, neatly filed letters from whom covered every table in theMinistry, awaiting reply, their very hand-writing and spellingcalculated to touch any heart but a civil servant's....

  Ivy found a moment in which to hope that everyone in the Ministry wasbeing very careful and painstaking about this business, before shereverted to wondering whether or not she liked the colour which MissPomfrey had dyed her jersey.

  Having decided that she didn't, and also that she had better go away andwait for Mr. Prideaux to send for her again, she departed.

  6

  Vernon Prideaux, having given his assistance to the Minister in thematter of the third clause of the new Clergymen's Babies Instruction,left the Minister and the deputation together and returned to his roomvia the Propaganda Branch, which he visited in order to ask MissGrammont to dine with him that evening. He and Kitty Grammont had knownone another for some years. They had begun at Cambridge, where Prideauxhad been two years the senior, and had kept up an intermittentfriendship ever since, which had, since their association in theMinistry, grown into intimacy.

  Prideaux found Kitty writing a pamphlet. She was rather good at thisform of literature, having a concise and clear-cut style and an instinctfor stopping on the right word. Some pamphleteers have not this art:they add a sentence or two more, and undo their effect. The pamphlet onwhich Miss Grammont was at this moment engaged was intended for theperusal of the working woman, and bore the conversational title, "TheNation takes an interest in Your Affairs: will You not take an interestin the Affairs of the Nation?" Which, as Miss Grammont observed, tookrather a long time to say, but may have been worth it.

  "Dine with you? I'll be charmed. Where and when?"

  "My rooms, eight o'clock. I've got my parents and the Minister coming."

  "Oh, the Minister."

  "Do you mind?"

  "No, I'm proud to meet him. I've never yet met him over food, so tospeak, only officially. I admire our Chester more every day he lives,don't you? Nature made him and then broke the die."

  "Wonderful man," Prideaux agreed. "Extraordinary being.... A happy touchwith bishops, too. Picked that up in the home, no doubt; his father'sone. _Liking's_ another thing, of course.... By the way, do you knowwhat his category is? However, this is gossip. I must get back anddiscover what's the latest perpetration of my new secretary. See youto-night, then."

  He lef
t the room. Kitty Grammont observed with satisfaction, for she wascritical of such things, how well his clothes fitted him, wondered whathe had nearly told her about the Minister's category, finished herpamphlet, and sent it out for typing. She had an idea that this pamphletmight not get passed by the censor, and wanted to find out. For thecensor was cautious about pamphlets, wisely opining that you cannot betoo careful. Pamphlets may, and usually do, deal with dangerous orindecent topics, such as the Future. If sufficiently dangerous andindecent, they become Leaflets, and are suppressed on sight. There weredangerous and explosive words, like Peace, War, and Freedom which thecensor dealt with drastically. The danger of the word Peace dated, ofcourse, from the days when Peace had not yet arrived and discussion ofit was therefore improper, like the discussion of an unborn infant. Bythe time it did arrive, its relegation to the region of Things we do notMention had become a habit, not lightly to be laid aside, so that aMinistry of Brains pamphlet entitled "The Peace of Fools" had beenstrangled before birth, the censor being very naturally unable tobelieve that it did not refer in some mysterious way to the negotiationswhich had ended hostilities, whereas as a matter of fact it was allabout the foolish content of stupid people who went on submitting todiseases which a little intelligent thought would have prevented. Therehad also perished, owing to the same caution on the censor's part, and,it must be presumed, to the same guilty conscience on the part of theGovernment, a booklet published by Messrs. Mowbray in a purple papercover with a gold cross on it, called "The Peace which passethunderstanding," not to mention a new edition of Burke's "RegicidePeace," and one or two other works of which the censor, whose readingwas obliged to be mainly twentieth century, mistook the date. And, iftreatises concerning Peace were suspected from force of habit, works onWar were discouraged also, on the sound British principle that thestress of a great Peace is not the time to talk of War; we must firstdeal with Peace, and _then_ we may think about War; but One Thing AtOnce, and do not let us cry War, War, when there is no war. But theremay be one day, argued the pamphleteers, and might it not be well toprepare our minds for it? To which the answer very properly was, No;Britons do not look ahead. They Come Through, instead. And anyhow it wastreachery to those who were spending their energies on this righteouspeace to discuss a premature war, which could neither be just norlasting.

  Another improper subject, naturally, was Liberty. That needs noexplanation; it has always been improper in well-regulated countries,like Eugenics, or the Poor, and has received no encouragement fromauthority. Notwithstanding this, so many improper works upon it, inevery conceivable form, have always been produced, that the censors hadto engage a special clerk, who had just obtained a first class inEnglish Literature at Oxford, and who therefore had books and pamphletsof all dates fresh in her memory, to check their researches and informthem when their energies were superfluous. Not that all the books offormer centuries on this topic were to be encouraged, for, after all,one period is in some respects singularly like another, and the samereflections strangely germane to both. Naturally, therefore, when theliterary clerk, seeing advertised a new and cheap edition of RobertHall's "Sentiments proper to the present crisis," and, remembering thetrend of this work, sent for it (having sold her own copy at Blackwell'swhen she went down), and read such remarks as "Freedom, driven fromevery spot on the continent, has sought an asylum in a country which shealways chose for her favourite abode, but she is pursued even here andthreatened with destruction.... It is for you to decide whether thisfreedom shall yet survive, or be clothed with a funeral pall and bewrapped in eternal gloom"--very properly she reported the matter toheadquarters, and the cheap edition was called in.

  Equally naturally there perished (without the help of the literaryclerk, who was not asked to judge of twentieth century literature)various collections of Free Verse, for which the Poetry Bookshop wassuccessfully raided, a tract of the sort which is dropped about trains,published by the Evangelical Tract Society and called "Throw off yourChains!", "Citizens of a Free City," which was found at Mowbray's, andbore on its title page the statement "Jerusalem ... is free" (a manifestand seditious untruth, as we, of course, held Jerusalem, in trust forthe Jews), and many others of like tendency, such as works on Free Food,Free Drink, Free Housing, Free Love, Free Thought, and Labour, inChains. Even fiction was suspect. A novel entitled _The Dangers ofDora_, by the well-known author of _The Perils of Pauline_ and _TheExploits of Elaine_, was suppressed, in spite of what should have beenthe reassuring fact that Dora, like Pauline and Elaine before her,triumphantly worsted all her foes in the end, and emerged smiling andsafe on the last page. Publishers were known to demand the alteration ofa title if the name Dora occurred in it, such wholesome respect did theCensor's methods inspire.

  It will therefore be readily understood that even government departmentshad to go warily in this matter.

  The Minister of Brains held pamphlet propaganda to be of the greatestimportance. A week ago the workers in the propaganda section had beensent for and interviewed by the Minister in person. This personalcontact had, for the time being, oddly weighted Miss Grammont's tooirresponsible levity, kindled her rather cynical coolness, given hersomething almost like zeal. That was one thing about the Minister--heset other people on fire. Another was that his manners were bad butunexpected, and a third that he looked like a cross between M. Kerensky,a member of the Geddes family, and Mr. Nelson Keys.

  Thus Miss Grammont, thoughtfully smoking a Cyprus cigarette, summed upthe Minister of Brains.