a famous financier. Since I began the Course I have doubled my income and halved those of 750 others. I hope, by the time I have completed the Course, to have ruined twice this number.
"From a Cabinet Minister. Owing to the Mind Training Course I have now remained in office for over six weeks. I hope to remain for at least three more.
"From a newspaper proprietor. I have started eight new journals since I took the Course, over-turned three governments, directed four international crises, and successfully represented Great Britain to the natives of the Pacific Islands.
"From the editor of a notorious weekly paper. I took the Course because I seemed to be losing that unrivalled touch which has made my paper what, I may say, it is. Since taking it, more than my old force has returned, so that I have libelled nine prominent persons and successfully defended six libel actions in the courts. The M.T. Course teaches one to Live at one's Best.
"From a Civil Servant. Every time a new government department is born I enter it, rendered competent by the Mind Training Course to fill its highest posts. When the Department falls I leave it, undamaged.
"From a Publisher. My judgment has been so stimulated by the Course that since taking it I have published five novels so unpleasant that correspondence still rages about them in the columns of the Spectator, and which have consequently achieved ten editions. The Course teaches one why some succeed and others fail.
"From a Journalist. I now only use the words decimated, literally, annihilated, and proletariat, according to the meanings ascribed to them in the dictionary, do not use pacifism more than three times a day, nor 'very essential' or 'rather unique' at all.
"From a famous Theologian. Before I undertook the Course I was a Bishop of a disestablished Church. Now my brain is clarified, my eyes are opened, and I am a leader of the Coming Faith. The Course teaches the Meaning of Life.
"From a former Secretary of State. Since taking the Course I have recognised the importance of keeping myself informed as to public affairs, and now never refer in my public speeches to any speech by another statesman without having previously read a summary of it.
"From a poet. I can now find rhymes to nearly all my lines, and have given up the old-fashioned habit of free rhythms to which I have been addicted since 1912. I can even find rhymes to indemnity, also a rhyme to War which is neither gore, claw, nor star.
"From an inveterate writer of letters to newspapers. I no longer do this.
"From a citizen. I was engaged to be married. Now I am not."
Then in large type again,
"All this has happened to Others! Why should it not happen to You? Save yourself, save your country, save the world! How shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? So asked the Preacher of the ancient world, and got no answer, because then there was none. But the answer is now forthcoming. Wisdom is to be found in the Government Mind Training Course—the M.T.C., as it is affectionately called by thousands of men and women who are deriving benefits from it. Enter for it to-day. For further information apply Mind Training Section, Ministry of Brains, S.W. 1."
Above the letterpress was a picture poster, representing two youths, and called "Before and After." "Before" had the vacuity of the village idiot, "After" the triumphant cunning of the maniac. The Mind Training Course had obviously completely overset a brain formerly harmless, if deficient.
"How long," enquired Amherst, in his best Oxford manner, "do you give yourselves? I address the enquiry, as a member of the public, to you, as servants of a government which can resort to such methods as that."
"We have now remained in office for over six months," said Kitty, "and we hope to remain for at least three more.... But it's for us to ask you, as a member of the public, how long you intend to give us? Personally I'm astonished every day that our hotel, and all the other hotels, aren't stormed and wrecked. I don't know why the Aero Bus Company, while it's on strike, doesn't sail over us and drop bombs. It shows we must be more popular than we deserve. It shows that people really like being coerced and improved. They know they need it. Look at the people going about this village; look at their faces, I ask you. They're like 'Before.' Look at the policeman at his door, half out of his clothes. He's god-like to look at; he's got a figure like the Discobolus, and the brain of a Dr. Watson. He could never track a thief. He's looking at us; he thinks we're thieves, probably, just because we're ambiguous. That's the sort of mind he has. Look at the doctor, in his absurd little Ford. How much do you suppose he knows about curing people, or about the science of bodies? He patches them up with pills and drugs, and.... But he didn't cut us, Tony. Why not?"
"He and the vicar don't," explained Anthony. "Professional attendance. There's the vicar, outside that cottage. See him put his hand up as we pass him."
He returned the salute with some pride, and Pansy nodded agreeably. Amherst examined the vicar, who was small and sturdy and had a nice kind face.
Amherst shook his head when they had left him behind.
"Not nearly clever enough for the part," he pronounced. "To organise religion a man should have the talents of the devil, or at least of the intelligent civil servant. Prideaux would do it quite well; or Chester; only Chester might be too erratic for the popular taste. No wonder Christianity is the ineffective thing it is in this country, if it's left in the hands of officials like that. That man couldn't organise anything; I bet even his school treats go wrong—too few buns or something. That's the hope for the world, that inefficiency of most religious officials; that's why the public will succeed before long in throwing off the whole business, even before they succeed in downing Parliament and the British autocracy, who are a shade more acute. From my point of view your vicar's stupidity is all to the good. If he preaches to-morrow as the Brains Ministry want him to—and he looks loyal and patriotic enough to try—he'll be preaching against his own interests. But that's what all you Brains people are doing, of course. You don't seem to see that if you ever were to succeed in making the human race reasonably intelligent, your number would be up; you wouldn't be stood for a moment longer. You're sitting on a branch and trying to saw it off. Lucky for you your saws aren't sharper."
"Chester would go on just the same if he did see," Kitty said. "He probably does. He's an idealist, but his eye for facts is very penetrating. And he'd think it worth while to perish in so good a cause."
"The fact is," added Prideaux, "that he never would perish, even if the branch did fall; he'd climb on to another pretty quickly and rise as the People's Saviour. Our Nicky won't go under."
3
They arrived at the End House, about which there is little to say except that it lay just beyond the straggling village, was roomy, comfortable, untidy, full of dogs all named after revue stars, and was an interesting mixture of the Grammont taste in art and decoration, which was the taste of clever people several of whom were artists, and of Pansy's taste, which is most shortly indicated by mentioning that if you saw the house before you saw Pansy you were surprised, and if you had seen Pansy first you were not. The drawing-room floor was littered with large and comfortable and brightly-hued cushions, obviously not mistakes but seats. This always a little flurried the vicar and his wife when they called; it was, as Mrs. Delmer observed, so very Eastern, and suggested other habits belonging to the same dubious quarter of the globe, some of which there was only too good reason to believe had been adopted. The chimney-piece was worse, being adorned by photographs of Pansy's friends—her loving Tottie, hers everlastingly, Guy, warmly Phyllis and Harry, and so forth. (There was even hers Jimmie, which, if Mrs. Delmer had known rather more of Pansy's domestic circumstances than she did, would have struck her as being in very doubtful taste.) Some of these ladies and gentlemen, fortunately, had elected to be taken head and shoulders only (and quite enough too, thought Mrs. Delmer, wondering how far below the bottom of the photograph the ladies' clothes began) and some showed the whole figure. ("I should think they did!" said Mrs. Delmer, on her first call, nervously retreating from the chimney-piece. It may be mentioned that Mrs. Delmer was not in the habit of witnessing revues, and was accustomed