What Not: A Prophetic Comedy

Wisdom is very unpleasant to the unlearned: he that is without understanding will not remain with her. She will lie upon him as a mighty stone of trial; and he will cast her from him ere it be long. For wisdom is according to her name, and she is not manifest unto many.... Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children.... Jesus, Son of Sirach, c. B.C. 150. It's domestickness of spirit, selvishnesse, which is the great let to Armies, Religions, and Kingdomes good. W. Greenhill, 1643. It has come to a fine thing if people cannot live in their homes without being interfered with by the police.... You are upsetting the country altogether with your Food Orders and What Not. Defendant in a Food-hoarding Case, January, 1918.
As this book was written during the war, and intended prophetically, its delay until some months after the armistice calls for a word of explanation.
The book was ready for publication in November, 1918, when it was discovered that a slight alteration in the text was essential, to safeguard it against one of the laws of the realm. As the edition was already bound, this alteration has naturally taken a considerable time.
However, as the date of the happenings described in What Not is unspecified, it may still be regarded as a prophecy, not yet disproved.
R. M.
March, 1919
One cannot write for evermore of life in war-time, even if, as at times seems possible, the war outlasts the youngest of us. Nor can one easily write of life as it was before this thing came upon us, for that is a queer, half-remembered thing, to make one cry. This is a tale of life after the war, in which alone there is hope. So it is, no doubt, inaccurate, too sanguine in part, too pessimistic in part, too foolish and too far removed from life as it will be lived even for a novel. It is a shot in the dark, a bow drawn at a venture. But it is the best one can do in the unfortunate circumstances, which make against all kinds of truth, even that inferior kind which is called accuracy. Truth, indeed, seems to be one of the things, along with lives, wealth, joy, leisure, liberty, and forest trees, which has to be sacrificed on the altar of this all-taking war, this bitter, unsparing god, which may perhaps before the end strip us of everything we possess except the integrity of our so fortunately situated island, our indomitable persistence in the teeth of odds, and the unstemmed eloquence of our leaders, all of which we shall surely retain.