What Not Part 16

But in the course of November a new element came into the attack--the personal element. Certain sections of the Press which supported the Ministry began to show discontent with the Minister. The _Times_ began to hint guardedly that new blood might perhaps be desirable in certain quarters. The _Daily Mail_, in its rounder and directer manner, remarked in large head-lines that "Nicky is played out." Ministers have to bear these intimations about themselves as they walk about London; fleeing from old gentlemen selling the _Daily Mail_ outside c.o.x's, Chester was confronted in the Strand by the _Herald_ remarking very loudly "CHESTER MUST GO." And then (but this was later) by the _Patriot_, which was much, much worse.

The _Patriot_ affair was different from the others. The _Patriot_ was, in fact, a different paper. The _Patriot_ had the personal, homely touch; it dealt faithfully not only with the public misdemeanours of prominent persons, but with the scandals of their private lives. It found things out. It abounded in implications and references, arch and jocose in manner and not usually discreet in matter. The _Patriot_ had been in the law courts many times, but as it remarked, "We are not afraid of prosecution." It had each week a column of open letters addressed to persons of varying degrees of prominence, in which it told them what it thought of them. The weak point of these letters was that the _Patriot_ was not a paper which was read by persons of prominence; its readers were the obscure and simple, who no doubt extracted much edification from them. Its editor was a Mr. Percy Jenkins, a gentleman of considerable talents, and, it was said, sufficient personal charm to be useful to him. What he lacked in aesthetic taste he made up in energy and patriotism, and the People hailed him affectionately as the People's friend. Throughout October Mr. Jenkins suffered apparently from a desire to have a personal interview with the Minister of Brains. He addressed private letters to him, intimating this desire, which were answered by his secretary in a chilly negative strain. He telephoned, enquiring when, if at all, he could have the pleasure of seeing the Minister, and was informed that the Minister had, unfortunately, no time for pleasures just now. He called at the Ministry and sent up his card, but was told that, as he had no appointment it was regretted that he could not penetrate further into the Ministry than the waiting-room. He called in the evening at the Minister's private address, but found him engaged.

After that, however, the Minister apparently relented, for Mr. Jenkins received a letter from his secretary informing him that, if he wished to see the Minister, he might call at his house at 9.30 p.m. on the following Monday. Mr. Jenkins did so. He was shown into the Minister's study. Chester was sitting by the fire, reading _Tales of my Grandfather_. He was never found writing letters, as one might expect a public man to be found; his secretary wrote all his official letters, and his unofficial letters were not written at all, Chester being of the opinion that if you leave the letters you receive long enough they answer themselves.

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

Chester did not commit himself, however, to any further kindness, but said stiffly, "I have very little time. I am, as you see, occupied"--he indicated _Tales of my Grandfather_--"and I shall be glad if you will state 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 doubt aware, I edit a paper--the _Patriot_--it is possible that you are acquainted with it."

"On the contrary," said Chester, "such an acquaintance would be quite impossible. 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 find close acquaintance with the _Patriot_ at all impossible. Its circulation...."

"We need not, I think, have that, Mr. Jenkins. Will you kindly go on with 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 const.i.tute time. What '_extremely_ limited' may mean, I cannot say. But if you mean that 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 is to disseminate correct information with regard to all matters, public and private. This, I may say, it is remarkably successful in doing.

Well, Mr. Chester, as of course you are aware, the public are very much interested in yourself. There is no one at the present moment who is more to the fore, or if I may say so, more discussed. Naturally, therefore, I should be glad if I could provide some items of public interest on this subject, and I should be very grateful for any a.s.sistance you could give me.... Now, Mr. Chester, I have heard lately a very interesting piece of news about you. People are saying that you are being 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 seen staying in the country together ... alone together, that is ... for week-ends...."

"Go on," said Chester.

Mr. Jenkins went on. "Other things are said; but I daresay they are mere rumour. Queer things get said about public men. I met someone the other day who lives in Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the Chilterns, and who has a curious and no doubt entirely erroneous idea about you.... Well, in the interests of the country, Mr. Chester (I have the welfare of the Ministry of Brains very much at heart, I may say; I am entirely with you in regarding intelligence as the Coming Force), I should like to be in a position to discredit these rumours. If you won't mind my saying so, they tell against you very seriously. You see, it is generally known that you are uncertificated for matrimony and parentage, if I may mention it. And once people get into their heads the idea that, while forcing 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 your authority to contradict these rumours, therefore."

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

Mr. Jenkins hesitated. "I cannot, of course, contradict the rumours without some a.s.surance 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 of the world sit together there behind impenetrable curtains, through the rifts of which only murmurs of the unbroken harmony which always prevails between allies steal through to a waiting world. Conversations between M. Trotzky and representatives of the German Government before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Conversations between the President of the Board of Trade and the Railway Companies when the price of travel is being increased; between governments and capitalists when elections are to be fought or newspapers to be bought; between Jane Austen's heroes and heroines in the hour when their pa.s.sion is declared.

For quite different reasons, all these conversations are left to the imagination, and I propose to leave to the same department of the reader's mind the interview between Mr. Percy Jenkins and the Minister of Brains. I will merely mention that the talking was, for the most part, done by Mr. Jenkins. The reasons for this were two. One was that Mr. Jenkins was a fluent talker, and the Minister capable of a taciturnity not invariably to be found in our statesmen. Both have their uses in the vicissitudes of public life. Both can be, if used effectively, singularly baffling to those who would probe the statesman'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 an Open 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 talk among the _Patriot's_ readers. Next week and other weeks there were further innuendoes, and more talk. One week there was a picture of Chester with several unmistakable, but also unmistakably deficient, little Chesters clinging to his coat. This picture was called "Following the dear old dad. What we may expect to see in the near future."

Mr. Percy Jenkins knew his business. And, during his interview with the Minister 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 having suddenly 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 bound to. 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, and the _Stop It_ campaign, and the cry for a Business Government. Business Government, indeed! The last word in inept futility...."

"All the same," Kitty said, rather gravely, "you and I have got to be rather 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 careful enough, in this observant world, when one is doing wrong. You can be too careful (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, because he had to see and confer with so many others--the Employers' Federation, and the Doctors, and the Timber Cutters, and the Worsted Industries, and the Farmers, and the Cotton Spinners, and the Newspaper Staffs, and the Church, and the Parents, and the Ministerial Council, and the Admiralty, and the Board of Education, and the War Office, and the Ministry of Reconstruction, and the Directorate of Propaganda. And the A.S.E.

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

Prideaux also, and the other heads of sections, on their humbler scale received deputations and conferred. Whether or not it was true to say of the Ministry (and to do Ministries justice, these statements are usually not true) that it did not try to enter sympathetically into the difficulties and grievances of the public, it is anyhow certain that the difficulties and grievances entered into the Ministry, from 9.30 a.m.

until 7 p.m. After 7 no more difficulties were permitted to enter, but the higher staff remained often till late into the night to grapple with those already there.

Meanwhile the government laid pledges in as many of the hands held out to them as they could. Pledges, in spite of a certain boomerang quality possessed by them, are occasionally useful things. They have various aspects; when you give them, they mean a little anger averted, a little content generated, a little time gained. When you receive them, they mean, normally, that others will (you hope) be compelled to do something disagreeable before you are. When others receive them, they mean that there is unfair favouritism. When (or if) you fulfil them, they mean that you are badly hampered thereby in the competent handling of your job. When you break them, they mean trouble. And when you merely hear about them from the outside they mean a moral lesson--that promises should be kept if made, but certainly never, never made.

It is very certain, anyhow, that the Ministry of Brains made at this time too many. No Ministry could have kept so many. There was, for instance, the Pledge to the Married Women, that the unmarried women should be called up for their Mind Training Course before they were.

There was the Pledge to the Mining Engineers, that unskilled labour should take the Course before skilled. There was the Pledge to the Parents of Five, that, however high the baby taxes were raised, the parents of six would always have to pay more on each baby. There was the Pledge to the Deficient, that they would not have to take the Mind Training Course at all. This last pledge was responsible for much agitation in Parliament. Distressing cases of imbeciles harried and bullied by the local Brains Boards were produced and enquired into.

(Question, "Is it not the case that the Ministry of Brains has become absolutely soulless in this matter of harrying the Imbecile?" Answer, "I have received no information to that effect." Question, "Are enquiries being made into the case of the deficient girl at Perivale Halt who was rejected three times as unfit for the Course and finally examined again and pa.s.sed, and developed acute imbecility and mumps half-way through the 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 the soullessness of the Ministry was its crushing and ignoring of the claims of the human heart. What could one say of a Ministry who deliberately and coldly stood between lover and lover, and dug gulfs between parent and unborn child, so that the child was either never born at all, or abandoned, derelict, when born, to the tender mercies of the state, or retained and paid for so heavily by fine or imprisonment that the parents might well be tempted to wonder whether after all the unfortunate infant was worth it?

"Him to be taxed!" an indignant parent would sometimes exclaim, admiring her 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 a big bonus for, so as you could hear them for a week all down the street drinking 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 anyone says."