2
Chester really did interview them all. To Kitty, whom already he knew personally, he talked freely.
"You must let the people in," he said, walking about the room, his hands in his pockets. "Don't keep them at official arm's length. Let them feel part of it all.... Make them catch fire with the idea of it.... It's sheer stark truth—intelligence is the thing that counts—if only everyone would see it. Make them see stupidity for the limp, hopeless, helpless, animal thing it is—an idiot drivelling on a green"—Kitty could have fancied that he shuddered a little—"make them hate it—want the other thing; want it so much that they'll even sacrifice a little of their personal comfort and desires to get it for themselves and their children. They must want it more than money, more than comfort, more than love, more than freedom.... You'll have to get hold of different people in different ways, of course; some have imaginations and some haven't; those who haven't must be appealed to through their common sense, if any, or, failing any, their feeling for their children, or, even, at the lowest, their fear of consequences.... Tell some of them there'll be another war if they're so stupid; tell others they'll never get on in the world; anything you think will touch the spot. But first, always, try to collar their imaginations.... You've done some public speaking, haven't you?"
Kitty owned it, and he nodded.
"That's all right, then; you'll know how to keep your finger on the audience's pulse.... You'll make them laugh, too...."
Kitty was uncertain, as she left the presence, whether this last was an instruction or a prophecy.
3
The other members of Kitty's party (the Campaign was to be conducted in parties of two or three people each) did not belong to the Ministry; they were hired for it for this purpose. They were a lady doctor, prominent on public platforms and decorated for signal services to her country during the Great War, and a free-lance clergyman known for his pulpit eloquence and the caustic wit with which he lashed the social system. He had resigned his incumbency long ago in order to devote himself the more freely to propaganda work for the causes he had at heart, wrote for a labour paper, and went round the country speaking. The Minister of Brains (who had been at Cambridge with him, and read his articles in the labour paper, in which he frequently stated that muddle-headedness was the curse of the world) had, with his usual eye for men, secured him to assist in setting forth the merits of the Brains Acts.
They began in Buckinghamshire, which was one of the counties assigned to them. At Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield it was chilly, and they held their meetings respectively in the National School and in the bright green Parish Hall which is the one blot on a most picturesque city. But at Little Chantreys it was fine, and they met at six o'clock in the broad open space outside the church. They had a good audience. The meeting had been well advertised, and it seemed that the village was as anxious to hear the Brains Acts explained as the Ministry was to explain them. Or possibly the village, for its own part, had something it wished to explain. Anyhow they came, rich and poor, high and low, men, women, children, and infants in arms (these had, for the most part, every appearance of deserving heavy taxation; however, the physiognomy of infants is sometimes misleading). Anthony Grammont and Pansy were there, with the Cheeper, now proud in his baptismal name of Montmorency. The vicar and his wife were there too, though Mr. Delmer did not approve much of the Reverend Stephen Dixon, rightly thinking him a disturbing priest. It was all very well to advocate Life and Liberty in moderation (though Mr. Delmer did not himself belong to the society for promoting these things in the Church), but the vicar did not believe that any church could stand, without bursting, the amount of new wine which Stephen Dixon wished to pour into it. "He is very much in earnest," was all the approval that he could, in his charity, give to this priest. So he waited a little uneasily for Dixon's remarks on the Brains Acts, feeling that it might become his ungracious duty to take public exception to some of them.
The scene had its picturesqueness in the evening sunshine—the open space in which the narrow village streets met, backed by the little grey church, and with a patch of green where women and children sat; and in front of these people standing, leisurely, placid, gossiping, the women innocently curious to hear what the speakers from London had to say about this foolish business there was such an upset about just now; some of the men more aggressive, determined to stand no nonsense, with a we'll-know-the-reason-why expression on their faces. This expression was peculiarly marked on the countenance of the local squire, Captain Ambrose. He did not like all this interfering, socialist what-not, which was both upsetting the domestic arrangements of his tenants and trying to put into their heads more learning than was suitable for them to have. For his part he thought every man had a right to be a fool if he chose, yes, and to marry another fool, and to bring up a family of fools too. Damn it all, fools or not, hadn't they shed their blood for their country, and where would the country have been without them, though now the country talked so glibly of not allowing them to reproduce themselves until they were more intelligent. Captain Ambrose, a fragile-looking man, burnt by Syrian suns and crippled by British machine-guns at instruction classes (a regrettable mistake which of course would not have occurred had the operator been more intelligent), stood in the forefront of the audience with intention to heckle. Near him stood the Delmers and Miss Ponsonby and Anthony Grammont. Pansy was talking, in her friendly, cheerful way, to Mrs. Delmer about the Cheeper's food arrangements, which were unusual in one so young.