Betty's contribution was "Brains! What a silly fuss about them. Who wants brains?"
Which was, indeed, a very pertinent question, and one which Nicholas Chester sometimes sadly asked himself.
Who, alas, did?
CHAPTER IV
OUR WEEK
1
Brains Week ("Our Week," as it was called by the ladies who sold flags for it) having opened thus auspiciously, flourished along its gallant way like a travelling fair urging people to come and buy, like a tank coaxing people to come in and purchase war bonds, like the War Office before the Military Service Acts, like the Ministry of Food before compulsory rationing. It was, in fact, the last great appeal for voluntary recruits for the higher intelligence; if it failed then compulsion would have to be resorted to. Many people thought that compulsion should in any case be resorted to; what was the good of a government if not to compel? If the Great War hadn't taught it that, it hadn't taught it much. This was the view put forward in many prominent journals; others, who would rather see England free than England clever, advocated with urgency the voluntary scheme, hoping, if it might be, to see England both.
It was a week of strenuous and gallant effort on the part of the Government and its assistants. Every Cinema showed dramas representing the contrasted fates of the Intelligent and the Stupid. Kiosks of Propaganda and Information were set up in every prominent shop. Trafalgar Square was brilliant with posters, a very flower-garden. The Ministry of Brains' artists had given of their best. Pictorial propaganda bloomed on every city wall, "Before and After," "The Rich Man and the Poor Man" (the Rich Man, in a faultless fur coat, observing to the Poor Man in patched reach-me-downs, "Yes, I was always below you at school, wasn't I? But since then I've taken the Mind Training Course, and now money rolls in. Sorry you're down on your luck, old man, but why don't you do as I've done?") and a special poster for underground railways, portraying victims of the perils of the streets—"A will be safe because he has taken the Mind Training Course and is consequently facing the traffic. B will not, because he has refused to improve his mind and has therefore alighted from a motor bus in the wrong direction and with his back to oncoming traffic; he will also be crushed by a street aero, having by his foolish behaviour excited the aviator. B will therefore perish miserably, AND DESERVES TO."
There were also pictures of human love, that most moving of subjects for art. "Yes, dear, I love you. But we are both C2" (they looked it). "We cannot marry; we must part for ever. You must marry Miss Bryte-Braynes, who has too few teeth and squints, and I must accept Mr. Brilliantine, who puts too much oil on his hair. For beauty is only skin-deep, but wisdom endures for ever. We must THINK OF POSTERITY."