What Not Part 17

"All the same," said Nicholas Chester to his colleagues, "there appears to me to be a considerably higher percentage of intelligent looking infants 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 observe a distinct improvement."

A distinct improvement was, in fact, discernible.

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

CHAPTER XI

THE STORMING OF THE HOTEL

1

In December Dora did a foolish thing. It is needless to say that she did other foolish things in other months; it is to be feared that she had been born before the Brains Acts; her mental category must be well below C3. But this particular folly is selected for mention because it had a disastrous effect on the already precarious destiny of the Ministry of Brains. Putting out a firm and practised hand, she laid it heavily and simultaneously upon four journals who were taking a rebellious att.i.tude towards the Brains Act--the _Nation_, _Stop It_, the _Herald_, and the _Patriot_. Thus she angered at one blow considerable sections of the Thoughtful, the Advanced, the Workers (commonly but erroneously known as the proletariat) and the Vulgar.

"Confound the fools," as Chester bitterly remarked; but the deed was then done.

"How long," Vernon Prideaux asked, "will it take governments to learn that revolutionary propaganda disseminated all over the country don't do as much harm as this sort of action?"

Chester was of opinion that, give the Ministry of Brains its chance, let it work for, say, fifty years, and even governments might at the end of that time have become intelligent enough to acquire such elementary pieces of knowledge. If only the Ministry _were_ given its chance, if it could weather the present unrest, let the country get used to it....

Custom: that was the great thing. People settled down under things at last. All sorts of dreadful things. Education, vaccination, taxation, sanitation, representation.... It was only a question of getting used to them.

2

Though the authorities were prepared for trouble, they did not foresee the events of Boxing-day, that strange day in the history of the Ministry.

The Ministry were so busy that many of the staff took no holiday beyond Christmas Day itself. Bank Holidays are, as everyone who has tried knows, an excellent time for working in one's office, because there are no interruptions from the outside world, no telephoning, no visitors, no registry continually sending up incoming correspondence. The clamorous, persistent public fade away from sound and sight, and ministries are left undistracted, to deal with them for their good in the academic seclusion of the office. If there was in this world an eternal Bank Holiday (some, but with how little reason, say that this awaits us in heaven) ministries would thrive better; governing would then become like pure mathematics, an abstract science unmarred by the continual fret and jar of contact with human demands, which drag them so roughly, so continually, down to earth.

On Boxing Day the Minister himself worked all day, and about a quarter of the higher staff were in their places. But by seven o'clock only the Minister remained, talking to Prideaux in his room.

The procession, at first in the form of four clouds each no bigger than a man's hand, trailed from out the north, south, east and west, and coalesced in Trafalgar Square. From there it marched down Whitehall to Westminster, and along the Embankment. It seemed harmless enough; a holiday crowd of men and women with banners, like the people who used to want Votes, or Church Disestablishment, or Peace, or Cheap Food. The chief difference to be observed between this and those old processions was that a large number in this procession seemed to fall naturally and easily into step, and marched in time, like soldiers. This was a characteristic now of most processions; that soldier's trick, once learnt, is not forgotten. It might have set an onlooker speculating on the advantages and the dangers of a nation of soldiers, that necessary sequence to an army of citizens.

The procession drew up outside the Ministry of Brains, and resolved itself into a meeting. It was addressed in a short and stirring speech from the Ministry steps by the president of the Stop It League, a fiery young man with a megaphone, who concluded his remarks with "Isn't it up to all who love freedom, all who hate tyranny, to lose no time, but to wreck the place where these things are done? That's what we're here to do to-night--to smash up this hotel and show the government what the men and women of England mean! Come on, boys!"

Too late the watching policemen knew that this procession and this meeting meant business, and should be broken up.

The Minister and Prideaux listened, from an open window, to the speaking outside. "Rendle," said Prideaux. "Scandalous mismanagement. What have the police been about? It's too late now to do much.... Do they know we are here, by the way? Probably not."

"They shall," replied Chester, and stepped out on to the balcony.

There was a hush, then a tremendous shout.

"It's the Minister! By G.o.d, it's Nicky Chester, the man who's made all the trouble!"

A voice rose above the rest.

"Quiet! Silence! Let him speak. Let's hear what he's got to say for himself."

Silence came, abruptly; the queer, awful, terrifying silence of a waiting crowd.

Into it Chester's voice cut, sharp and incisive.

"You fools. Get out of this and go home. Don't you know that you're heading for serious trouble--that you'll find yourselves in prison for this? Get out before it's too late. That's all I have to say."

"That's all he's got to say," the crowd took it up like a refrain.

"That's all he's got to say, after all the trouble he's made!"

A suave, agreeable voice rose above the rest.

"That is _not_ quite all he's got to say. There's something else. He's got to answer two plain questions. Number one: _Are you certificated for marriage, Mr. Chester, or have you got mental deficiency in your family?_"

There was an instant's pause. Then the Minister, looking down from the balcony at the upturned faces, white in the cold moonlight, said, clearly, "I am not certificated for marriage, owing to the cause you mention."

"Thank you," said the voice. "Have you all noted that, boys? The Minister of Brains is not certificated for marriage. He has deficiency in his family. Now, Mr. Chester, question number two, please. _Am I correct in stating that you--got--married--last--August?_"

"You are quite correct, Mr. Jenkins."

Chester heard beside him Prideaux's mutter--"Good G.o.d!" and then, below him, broke the roar of the crowd.

"Come on, boys!" someone shouted. "Come on and wreck the blooming show, and nab the blooming showman before he slips off!"

Men flung themselves up the steps and through the big doors, and surged up the stairs.

"This," remarked Prideaux, "is going to be some mess. I'll go and get Rendle to see sense, if I can. He's leading them up the stairs, probably."

"I fancy that won't be necessary," said Chester. "Rendle and his friends are coming in here, apparently."

The door was burst open, and men rushed in. Chester and Prideaux faced them, standing before the door.

"You fools," Chester said again. "What good do you think you're going to do yourselves by this?"

"Here he is, boys! Here's Nicky Chester, the married man!"

Chester and Prideaux were surrounded and pinioned.

"Don't hurt him," someone exhorted. "We'll hang him out over the balcony and ask the boys down there what to do with him."

They dragged him on to the balcony and swung him over the rail, dangling him by a leg and an arm. One of them shouted, "Here's the Minister, boys! Here's Nicky, the Minister of Brains!"

The crowd looked up and saw him, swinging in mid air, and a great shout went up.

"Yes," went on the speaker from the balcony, "Here's Nicky Chester, the man who dares to dictate to the people of Britain who they may marry and what kids they may have, and then goes and gets married himself, breaking his own laws, and hushes it up so that he thought it would never come out." ("I always knew it would come out," the Minister muttered, inarticulately protesting against this estimate of his intelligence.) "But it _has_ come out," the speaker continued. "And now what are we to do with him, with this man who won't submit to the laws he forces on other people? This man who dares to tell other people to bear what he won't bear himself? What shall we do with him? Drop him down into the street?"

For a moment it seemed that the Minister's fate, like himself, hung suspended.