A MINISTRY AT BAY
1
That autumn was a feverish period in the Ministry's career. Many persons
have been called upon, for one cause or another, to wait in nervous
anticipation hour by hour for the signal which shall herald their own
destruction. Thus our ancestors at the latter end of the tenth century
waited expectantly for the crack of doom; but the varying emotions with
which they awaited it can only be guessed at. More vivid to the mind and
memory are the expectant and waiting first days of August, 1914. On the
other hand, the emotions of cabinets foreseeing their own resignation,
of the House of Lords anticipating abolition, of criminals awaiting
sentence, of newspapers desperately staving off extinction, of the crews
of foundered ships struggling to keep afloat, of government departments
anticipating their own untimely end, are mysteries veiled from the
outside world, sacred ground which may not be trodden by the multitude.
The Ministry of Brains that autumn was fighting hard and gallantly for
its life. It was an uphill struggle; Sisyphus pushing up the mountain
the stone of human perverseness, human stupidity, human self-will, which
threatened 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 ones
amended or withdrawn, far-reaching and complicated arrangements made
with various groups and classes of people, "little ministries" set up
all over the country to administrate the acts regionally, soothing
replies and promises dropped like leaves in autumn by the Parliamentary
Secretary, to be gathered up, hoarded, and brooded over in many a
humble, many a stately home. It is superfluous to recapitulate these
well-worn, oft-enacted, pathetic incidents of a tottering ministry.
Ministries, though each with a special stamp in hours of ease, are all
much alike when pain and anguish wring their brows. With arts very
similar each to other they woo a public uncertain, coy and hard to
please; a public too ready to believe the worst of them, too pitiless
and unimaginative towards their good intentions, too extreme to mark
what is done amiss, too loth to admit success, too ready to condemn
failure without measuring the strength of temptation.
Ministries have a bitter time; their hand is against every man and every
man's hand against them. For their good men return them evil and for
their evil no good. And--let it not be forgotten--they are really, with
all their faults, more intelligent, and fuller of good intentions, than
the vast majority of their critics. The critics cry aloud "Get rid of
them," without always asking themselves who would do the job any better,
always providing it has to be done. In the case of the Ministry of
Brains, the majority of the public saw no reason why the job should be
done at all, which complicated matters. It was like the Directorate of
Recruiting during the war, or the Censor's office, or the Ministry of
Food; not merely its method but its function was unwelcome. As most men
did not want to be recruited by law, or to have their reading or their
diet regulated by law, so they did not want to be made intelligent by
law. All these things might be, and doubtless were, for the ultimate
good of the nation, but all were inconvenient at the moment, and when
ultimate good (especially not necessarily one's own good) and immediate
convenience come to blows, it is not usually ultimate good which wins.
So the Ministry of Brains, even more than other ministries, was fighting
against odds. Feverish activity prevailed, in all departments. From
morning till night telephones telephoned, clerks wrote, typists typed
against time, deputations deputed, committees committeed, officials
conferred with each other, messengers ran to and fro with urgent minutes
and notes by hand. Instructions and circular letters poured forth,
telegrams were despatched in hot haste to the local Ministries and to
the Brains Representatives on the local tribunals, the staff arrived
early and stayed late, and often came on Sundays as well, and grew thin
and dyspeptic and nervy and irritable.
2
Even Ivy Delmer grew pale and depressed, not so much from official
strain as from private worries. These she confided one day to Kitty, who
had got transferred back to headquarters, through a little quiet
wire-pulling (it is no use being married to a Minister if little things
like that cannot easily be arranged), and was now working in her old
branch. They were travelling together one Monday morning up from Little
Chantreys.
"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 stupid
really, not the way some men are, you know, he's jolly clever at some
things--ideas, and that), but of course it's against the regulations for
us to marry each other. And yet we care for each other, and we both of
us feel we always shall. And we neither of us want a bit to marry an A
person, 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 each
other up would mean spoiling both our lives.... Yet I suppose everyone
would think it awfully wrong if we got regularly engaged, and me working
at the Ministry too. I suppose I ought to leave it really, feeling the
way I do.... The fact is, I've come to feel very differently about the
Ministry, now I've thought it more over, and--you'll be horrified, I
know--but I'm not at all sure I approve of it."
"Good gracious no," Kitty said. "I never approve of any Ministries. That
isn't what one feels for them. Sympathy; pity; some affection, even; but
approval--no."
"Well, you see what I mean, it's all very well in theory, but I do
honestly know so many people whose lives have been upset and spoilt by
it--and it does seem hard. Heaps of people in Little Chantreys alone; of
course we come across them rather a lot, because they tell father and
mother about it.... And all the poor little deserted babies.... Oh I
suppose it's all right.... But I'm feeling a bit off it just now.... Now
I ask you, feeling as I do about it, and meaning to do what I'm going to
do (at least we hope we're going to do it sometime), ought I to go on at
the 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 there
seemed no occasion for it just now.
"Well, yes, I think I would. I don't see that you're called on to give
it up--unless, of course, you hate it, and want to.... After all, one
would very seldom stick to any work at all if one felt obliged to
approve 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'd
rather, in one way, of course, especially as we shall need all the money
we can get if we ever do marry. Not that I'm saving; I spend every penny
I get, I'm afraid. But of course it takes me off father's hands....
Don't _you_ feel, Miss Grammont, that all this interference with
people's private lives is a mistake? It's come home to me awfully
strongly lately. Only when I read the Minister's speeches I change my
mind again; he puts it so rippingly, and makes me feel perhaps I'm being
simply 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 they
reached Marylebone.
That conversation was typical, even as Ivy Delmer's standpoint was
itself typical, of a large body of what, for lack of a better name, we
must call thought, all over the country. Laws were all very well in
theory, or when they only disarranged the lives of others, but when they
touched and disorganised one's own life--hands off. Was the only
difference between such as Ivy Delmer and such as Nicholas Chester that
Ivy deceived herself ("It's not that I care a bit for myself, but it's
the principle of the thing") and that Chester fell with open eyes? Which
was perhaps as much as to say that Ivy was classified B3 and Chester A.
All over the country people were saying, according to their different
temperaments, one or another of these things. "Of course I don't care
for 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 stand
being inconvenienced by it," or "I'm not going to stand it _and_ it's
all wrong." Of course there were also those more public-spirited persons
who 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." But
these were the minority.
3
Up till November the campaign against the Brains Ministry was quite
impersonal, merely resentment against a system. It was led, in the
Press, by the Labour papers, which objected to compulsion, by the
_Nation_, which objected to what it, rightly or wrongly, called by that
much-abused name, Prussianism, by the _New Witness_, which objected to
interference with the happy stupidity of merry Gentiles (making them
disagreeably clever like Jews), and by _Stop It_, which objected to
everything. It was supported by the more normal organs of opinion of the
kind which used before and during the war to be called conservative and
liberal. And, of course, through thick and thin, by the _Hidden Hand_.
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 Cox'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 constitute
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
assistance 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 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 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 passion 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 passed, 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."
"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.