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."