What Not: A Prophetic Comedy Page 11

  CHAPTER X

  A MINISTRY AT BAY

  1

  That autumn was a feverish period in the Ministry's career. Many personshave been called upon, for one cause or another, to wait in nervousanticipation hour by hour for the signal which shall herald their owndestruction. Thus our ancestors at the latter end of the tenth centurywaited expectantly for the crack of doom; but the varying emotions withwhich they awaited it can only be guessed at. More vivid to the mind andmemory are the expectant and waiting first days of August, 1914. On theother hand, the emotions of cabinets foreseeing their own resignation,of the House of Lords anticipating abolition, of criminals awaitingsentence, of newspapers desperately staving off extinction, of the crewsof foundered ships struggling to keep afloat, of government departmentsanticipating their own untimely end, are mysteries veiled from theoutside world, sacred ground which may not be trodden by the multitude.

  The Ministry of Brains that autumn was fighting hard and gallantly forits life. It was an uphill struggle; Sisyphus pushing up the mountainthe stone of human perverseness, human stupidity, human self-will, whichthreatened all the time to roll back and grind him to powder.Concessions were made here, pledges given there (even, here or there,occasionally fulfilled). New Instructions were issued daily, old onesamended or withdrawn, far-reaching and complicated arrangements madewith various groups and classes of people, "little ministries" set upall over the country to administrate the acts regionally, soothingreplies and promises dropped like leaves in autumn by the ParliamentarySecretary, to be gathered up, hoarded, and brooded over in many ahumble, many a stately home. It is superfluous to recapitulate thesewell-worn, oft-enacted, pathetic incidents of a tottering ministry.Ministries, though each with a special stamp in hours of ease, are allmuch alike when pain and anguish wring their brows. With arts verysimilar each to other they woo a public uncertain, coy and hard toplease; a public too ready to believe the worst of them, too pitilessand unimaginative towards their good intentions, too extreme to markwhat is done amiss, too loth to admit success, too ready to condemnfailure without measuring the strength of temptation.

  Ministries have a bitter time; their hand is against every man and everyman's hand against them. For their good men return them evil and fortheir evil no good. And--let it not be forgotten--they are really, withall their faults, more intelligent, and fuller of good intentions, thanthe vast majority of their critics. The critics cry aloud "Get rid ofthem," without always asking themselves who would do the job any better,always providing it has to be done. In the case of the Ministry ofBrains, the majority of the public saw no reason why the job should bedone at all, which complicated matters. It was like the Directorate ofRecruiting during the war, or the Censor's office, or the Ministry ofFood; not merely its method but its function was unwelcome. As most mendid not want to be recruited by law, or to have their reading or theirdiet regulated by law, so they did not want to be made intelligent bylaw. All these things might be, and doubtless were, for the ultimategood of the nation, but all were inconvenient at the moment, and whenultimate good (especially not necessarily one's own good) and immediateconvenience come to blows, it is not usually ultimate good which wins.

  So the Ministry of Brains, even more than other ministries, was fightingagainst odds. Feverish activity prevailed, in all departments. Frommorning till night telephones telephoned, clerks wrote, typists typedagainst time, deputations deputed, committees committeed, officialsconferred with each other, messengers ran to and fro with urgent minutesand notes by hand. Instructions and circular letters poured forth,telegrams were despatched in hot haste to the local Ministries and tothe Brains Representatives on the local tribunals, the staff arrivedearly and stayed late, and often came on Sundays as well, and grew thinand dyspeptic and nervy and irritable.

  2

  Even Ivy Delmer grew pale and depressed, not so much from officialstrain as from private worries. These she confided one day to Kitty, whohad got transferred back to headquarters, through a little quietwire-pulling (it is no use being married to a Minister if little thingslike that cannot easily be arranged), and was now working in her oldbranch. They were travelling together one Monday morning up from LittleChantreys.

  "Now I ask you, Miss Grammont, what would _you_ do? I'm B3 and he's C1(I'm certain they've classified him wrong, because he's not a bit stupidreally, not the way some men are, you know, he's jolly clever at somethings--ideas, and that), but of course it's against the regulations forus to marry each other. And yet we care for each other, and we both ofus feel we always shall. And we neither of us want a bit to marry an Aperson, besides, I don't suppose an A would ever think of us in _that_way, you know what I mean, Miss Grammont, don't laugh, and to give eachother up would mean spoiling both our lives.... Yet I suppose everyonewould think it awfully wrong if we got regularly engaged, and me workingat the Ministry too. I suppose I ought to leave it really, feeling theway I do.... The fact is, I've come to feel very differently about theMinistry, now I've thought it more over, and--you'll be horrified, Iknow--but I'm not at all sure I approve of it."

  "Good gracious no," Kitty said. "I never approve of any Ministries. Thatisn't what one feels for them. Sympathy; pity; some affection, even; butapproval--no."

  "Well, you see what I mean, it's all very well in theory, but I dohonestly know so many people whose lives have been upset and spoilt byit--and it does seem hard. Heaps of people in Little Chantreys alone; ofcourse we come across them rather a lot, because they tell father andmother about it.... And all the poor little deserted babies.... Oh Isuppose it's all right.... But I'm feeling a bit off it just now.... NowI ask you, feeling as I do about it, and meaning to do what I'm going todo (at least we hope we're going to do it sometime), ought I to go on atthe Ministry? Is it honest? Would _you_, Miss Grammont?"

  Kitty blushed faintly, to her own credit and a little to Ivy's surprise.She did not associate blushing with Miss Grammont, and anyhow thereseemed no occasion for it just now.

  "Well, yes, I think I would. I don't see that you're called on to giveit up--unless, of course, you hate it, and want to.... After all, onewould very seldom stick to any work at all if one felt obliged toapprove entirely of it. No, I don't think there's much in that."

  "You truly don't? Well, I expect I'll carry on for a bit, then. I'drather, in one way, of course, especially as we shall need all the moneywe can get if we ever do marry. Not that I'm saving; I spend every pennyI get, I'm afraid. But of course it takes me off father's hands....Don't _you_ feel, Miss Grammont, that all this interference withpeople's private lives is a mistake? It's come home to me awfullystrongly lately. Only when I read the Minister's speeches I change mymind again; he puts it so rippingly, and makes me feel perhaps I'm beingsimply a selfish little beast. I don't care what anybody says about him,I think he's wonderful."

  "I suppose he is," said Kitty.

  "My word, he jolly well _would_ despise me if he knew, wouldn't he?"

  "Well...." said Kitty. And perhaps it was well that at that moment theyreached Marylebone.

  That conversation was typical, even as Ivy Delmer's standpoint wasitself typical, of a large body of what, for lack of a better name, wemust call thought, all over the country. Laws were all very well intheory, or when they only disarranged the lives of others, but when theytouched and disorganised one's own life--hands off. Was the onlydifference between such as Ivy Delmer and such as Nicholas Chester thatIvy deceived herself ("It's not that I care a bit for myself, but it'sthe principle of the thing") and that Chester fell with open eyes? Whichwas perhaps as much as to say that Ivy was classified B3 and Chester A.

  All over the country people were saying, according to their differenttemperaments, one or another of these things. "Of course I don't carefor myself, but I think the system is wrong," or (the other way round)"It may be all right in theory, but I'm jolly well not going to standbeing inconvenienced by it," or "I'm not going to stand it _and_ it'sall wrong." Of course there were also those more public-spirited personswh
o said, "It's a splendid system and I'm going to fall in with it," or"Though it's a rotten system I suppose we must put up with it." Butthese were the minority.

  3

  Up till November the campaign against the Brains Ministry was quiteimpersonal, merely resentment against a system. It was led, in thePress, by the Labour papers, which objected to compulsion, by the_Nation_, which objected to what it, rightly or wrongly, called by thatmuch-abused name, Prussianism, by the _New Witness_, which objected tointerference with the happy stupidity of merry Gentiles (making themdisagreeably clever like Jews), and by _Stop It_, which objected toeverything. It was supported by the more normal organs of opinion of thekind which used before and during the war to be called conservative andliberal. And, of course, through thick and thin, by the _Hidden Hand_.

  But in the course of November a new element came into the attack--thepersonal element. Certain sections of the Press which supported theMinistry began to show discontent with the Minister. The _Times_ beganto hint guardedly that new blood might perhaps be desirable in certainquarters. The _Daily Mail_, in its rounder and directer manner, remarkedin large head-lines that "Nicky is played out." Ministers have to bearthese intimations about themselves as they walk about London; fleeingfrom old gentlemen selling the _Daily Mail_ outside Cox's, Chester wasconfronted in the Strand by the _Herald_ remarking very loudly "CHESTERMUST GO." And then (but this was later) by the _Patriot_, which wasmuch, much worse.

  The _Patriot_ affair was different from the others. The _Patriot_ was,in fact, a different paper. The _Patriot_ had the personal, homelytouch; it dealt faithfully not only with the public misdemeanours ofprominent persons, but with the scandals of their private lives. Itfound things out. It abounded in implications and references, arch andjocose in manner and not usually discreet in matter. The _Patriot_ hadbeen in the law courts many times, but as it remarked, "We are notafraid of prosecution." It had each week a column of open lettersaddressed to persons of varying degrees of prominence, in which it toldthem what it thought of them. The weak point of these letters was thatthe _Patriot_ was not a paper which was read by persons of prominence;its readers were the obscure and simple, who no doubt extracted muchedification from them. Its editor was a Mr. Percy Jenkins, a gentlemanof considerable talents, and, it was said, sufficient personal charm tobe useful to him. What he lacked in aesthetic taste he made up in energyand patriotism, and the People hailed him affectionately as the People'sfriend. Throughout October Mr. Jenkins suffered apparently from a desireto have a personal interview with the Minister of Brains. He addressedprivate letters to him, intimating this desire, which were answered byhis secretary in a chilly negative strain. He telephoned, enquiringwhen, if at all, he could have the pleasure of seeing the Minister, andwas informed that the Minister had, unfortunately, no time for pleasuresjust now. He called at the Ministry and sent up his card, but was toldthat, as he had no appointment it was regretted that he could notpenetrate further into the Ministry than the waiting-room. He called inthe evening at the Minister's private address, but found him engaged.

  After that, however, the Minister apparently relented, for Mr. Jenkinsreceived a letter from his secretary informing him that, if he wished tosee the Minister, he might call at his house at 9.30 p.m. on thefollowing Monday. Mr. Jenkins did so. He was shown into the Minister'sstudy. Chester was sitting by the fire, reading _Tales of myGrandfather_. He was never found writing letters, as one might expect apublic man to be found; his secretary wrote all his official letters,and his unofficial letters were not written at all, Chester being of theopinion that if you leave the letters you receive long enough theyanswer themselves.

  Mr. Jenkins, having been invited to sit down, did so, and said, "Verykind of you to give me this interview, sir."

  Chester did not commit himself, however, to any further kindness, butsaid stiffly, "I have very little time. I am, as you see, occupied"--heindicated _Tales of my Grandfather_--"and I shall be glad if you willstate your business at once, sir, and as plainly as you can."

  Mr. Jenkins murmured pleasantly, "Well, we needn't be blunt, exactly....But you are quite right, sir; I _have_ business. As you are no doubtaware, I edit a paper--the _Patriot_--it is possible that you areacquainted with it."

  "On the contrary," said Chester, "such an acquaintance would be quiteimpossible. But I have heard of it. I know to what paper you refer.Please go on."

  "Everybody," retorted Mr. Jenkins, a little nettled, "does not findclose acquaintance with the _Patriot_ at all impossible. Itscirculation...."

  "We need not, I think, have that, Mr. Jenkins. Will you kindly go onwith your business?"

  Mr. Jenkins shrugged his shoulders.

  "Your time appears to be extremely limited, sir."

  "All time," returned the Minister, relapsing, as was often his habit,into metaphysics, "is limited. Limits are, in fact, what constitutetime. What '_extremely_ limited' may mean, I cannot say. But if you meanthat I desire this interview to be short, you are correct."

  Mr. Jenkins hurried on.

  "The _Patriot_, as you may have heard, sir, deals with truth. Its aim isto disseminate correct information with regard to all matters, publicand private. This, I may say, it is remarkably successful in doing.Well, Mr. Chester, as of course you are aware, the public are very muchinterested in yourself. There is no one at the present moment who ismore to the fore, or if I may say so, more discussed. Naturally,therefore, I should be glad if I could provide some items of publicinterest on this subject, and I should be very grateful for anyassistance you could give me.... Now, Mr. Chester, I have heard lately avery interesting piece of news about you. People are saying that you arebeing seen a great deal in the company of a certain lady." He paused.

  "Go on," said Chester.

  "It has even been said," continued Mr. Jenkins, "that you have been seenstaying in the country together ... alone together, that is ... forweek-ends...."

  "Go on," said Chester.

  Mr. Jenkins went on. "Other things are said; but I daresay they are mererumour. Queer things get said about public men. I met someone the otherday who lives in Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the Chilterns, and whohas a curious and no doubt entirely erroneous idea about you.... Well,in the interests of the country, Mr. Chester (I have the welfare of theMinistry of Brains very much at heart, I may say; I am entirely with youin regarding intelligence as the Coming Force), I should like to be in aposition to discredit these rumours. If you won't mind my saying so,they tell against you very seriously. You see, it is generally knownthat you are uncertificated for matrimony and parentage, if I maymention it. And once people get into their heads the idea that, whileforcing these laws on others, you are evading them yourself ... well,you may imagine it might damage your work considerably. You and I, Mr.Chester, know what the public are.... I should be glad to have yourauthority to contradict these rumours, therefore."

  Chester said, "Certainly. You may contradict anything you please. Ishall raise no objection. Is that all?"

  Mr. Jenkins hesitated. "I cannot, of course, contradict the rumourswithout some assurance that they are false...."

  They had an interesting conversation on this topic for ten minutes more,which I do not intend to record in these pages.

  So many conversations are, for various reasons, not recorded.Conversations, for instance, at Versailles, when the allied powers ofthe world sit together there behind impenetrable curtains, through therifts of which only murmurs of the unbroken harmony which alwaysprevails between allies steal through to a waiting world. Conversationsbetween M. Trotzky and representatives of the German Government beforethe Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Conversations between the President of theBoard of Trade and the Railway Companies when the price of travel isbeing increased; between governments and capitalists when elections areto be fought or newspapers to be bought; between Jane Austen's heroesand heroines in the hour when their passion is declared.

  For quite different reasons, all these conversations are left to theimagination, and I pr
opose to leave to the same department of thereader's mind the interview between Mr. Percy Jenkins and the Ministerof Brains. I will merely mention that the talking was, for the mostpart, done by Mr. Jenkins. The reasons for this were two. One was thatMr. Jenkins was a fluent talker, and the Minister capable of ataciturnity not invariably to be found in our statesmen. Both have theiruses in the vicissitudes of public life. Both can be, if usedeffectively, singularly baffling to those who would probe thestatesman's mind and purposes. But fluency is, to most (it would seem)the easier course.

  * * * * *

  Anyhow this was how the _Patriot_ campaign started. It began with anOpen Letter.

  "_To the Minister of Brains._

  "Dear Mr. Nicholas Chester,

  "There is a saying 'Physician, heal thyself.' There is also, in the same book (a book which, coming of clerical, even episcopal, parentage, you should be acquainted with), 'Cast out the beam which is in thine own eye, and then thou shalt see more plainly to pull out the mote which is in thy brother's eye.' We will on this occasion say no more than that we advise you to take heed to these sayings before you issue many more orders relating to matrimony and such domestic affairs. And yet a third saying, 'Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?' you would do well to ponder in your heart."

  That was all, that week. But it was enough to start speculation and talkamong the _Patriot's_ readers. Next week and other weeks there werefurther innuendoes, and more talk. One week there was a picture ofChester with several unmistakable, but also unmistakably deficient,little Chesters clinging to his coat. This picture was called "Followingthe dear old dad. What we may expect to see in the near future."

  Mr. Percy Jenkins knew his business. And, during his interview with theMinister of Brains, he had conceived an extreme dislike towards him.

  4

  "He'll feel worse before I've done with him," Chester said to Kitty.They were sitting together on Kitty's sofa, with a copy of the _Patriot_between them. Kitty was now alone in her flat, her cousin havingsuddenly taken it into her head to get married.

  "I always said it would come out," was Kitty's reply. "And now you see."

  "Of course I knew it would come out," Chester said calmly. "It was boundto. However, it hasn't yet. All this is mere talk. It's more offensive,but not really so serious, as the Labour attacks on the Ministry, andthe _Stop It_ campaign, and the cry for a Business Government. BusinessGovernment, indeed! The last word in inept futility...."

  "All the same," Kitty said, rather gravely, "you and I have got to berather more careful, Nicky. We've been careful, I think, but not enough,it seems."

  "There's no such thing," said Chester, who was tired, "as being carefulenough, in this observant world, when one is doing wrong. You can be toocareful (don't let's, by the way) but you can't be careful enough."

  5

  But Chester did not really see Kitty very often in these days, becausehe had to see and confer with so many others--the Employers' Federation,and the Doctors, and the Timber Cutters, and the Worsted Industries, andthe Farmers, and the Cotton Spinners, and the Newspaper Staffs, and theChurch, and the Parents, and the Ministerial Council, and the Admiralty,and the Board of Education, and the War Office, and the Ministry ofReconstruction, and the Directorate of Propaganda. And the A.S.E.

  It is much to be hoped that conferences are useful; if they are not, itcannot, surely, be from lack of practice.

  Prideaux also, and the other heads of sections, on their humbler scalereceived deputations and conferred. Whether or not it was true to say ofthe Ministry (and to do Ministries justice, these statements are usuallynot true) that it did not try to enter sympathetically into thedifficulties and grievances of the public, it is anyhow certain that thedifficulties and grievances entered into the Ministry, from 9.30 a.m.until 7 p.m. After 7 no more difficulties were permitted to enter, butthe higher staff remained often till late into the night to grapple withthose already there.

  Meanwhile the government laid pledges in as many of the hands held outto them as they could. Pledges, in spite of a certain boomerang qualitypossessed by them, are occasionally useful things. They have variousaspects; when you give them, they mean a little anger averted, a littlecontent generated, a little time gained. When you receive them, theymean, normally, that others will (you hope) be compelled to do somethingdisagreeable before you are. When others receive them, they mean thatthere is unfair favouritism. When (or if) you fulfil them, they meanthat you are badly hampered thereby in the competent handling of yourjob. When you break them, they mean trouble. And when you merely hearabout them from the outside they mean a moral lesson--that promisesshould be kept if made, but certainly never, never made.

  It is very certain, anyhow, that the Ministry of Brains made at thistime too many. No Ministry could have kept so many. There was, forinstance, the Pledge to the Married Women, that the unmarried womenshould be called up for their Mind Training Course before they were.There was the Pledge to the Mining Engineers, that unskilled labourshould take the Course before skilled. There was the Pledge to theParents of Five, that, however high the baby taxes were raised, theparents of six would always have to pay more on each baby. There was thePledge to the Deficient, that they would not have to take the MindTraining Course at all. This last pledge was responsible for muchagitation in Parliament. Distressing cases of imbeciles harried andbullied by the local Brains Boards were produced and enquired into.(Question, "Is it not the case that the Ministry of Brains has becomeabsolutely soulless in this matter of harrying the Imbecile?" Answer, "Ihave received no information to that effect." Question, "Are enquiriesbeing made into the case of the deficient girl at Perivale Halt who wasrejected three times as unfit for the Course and finally examined againand passed, and developed acute imbecility and mumps half-way throughthe Course?" Answer, "Enquiries are being made." And so on, and so on,and so on.)

  But, in the eyes of the general public, the chief testimony to thesoullessness of the Ministry was its crushing and ignoring of the claimsof the human heart. What could one say of a Ministry who deliberatelyand coldly stood between lover and lover, and dug gulfs between parentand unborn child, so that the child was either never born at all, orabandoned, derelict, when born, to the tender mercies of the state, orretained and paid for so heavily by fine or imprisonment that theparents might well be tempted to wonder whether after all theunfortunate infant was worth it?

  "Him to be taxed!" an indignant parent would sometimes exclaim, admiringher year-old infant's obvious talents. "Why he's as bright as anything.Just look at him.... And little Albert next door, what his parents got abig bonus for, so as you could hear them for a week all down the streetdrinking it away, he can't walk yet, nor hardly look up when spoke to.Deficient, _I_ calls him. It isn't fair dealing, no matter what anyonesays."

  "All the same," said Nicholas Chester to his colleagues, "there appearsto me to be a considerably higher percentage of intelligent lookinginfants of under three years of age than there were formerly.Intelligent looking, that is to say, _for_ infants. Infants, of course,are not intelligent creatures. Their mental level is low. But I observea distinct improvement."

  A distinct improvement was, in fact, discernible.

  But, among the Great Unimproved, and among those who did not wantimprovement, discontent grew and spread; the slow, aggrieved discontentof the stupid, to whom personal freedom is as the breath of life, towhom the welfare of the race is as an idle, intangible dream, not worththe consideration of practical men and women.