This book is, anyhow, so far as it is anything beyond an attempt to amuse the writer, rather of the nature of suggestion than of prophecy, and many will think it a poor suggestion at that. The suggestion is of a possible remedy for what appears to have always been the chief human ailment, and what will, probably, after these present troubles, be even more pronounced than before. For wars do not conduce to intelligence. They put a sudden end to many of the best intellects, the keenest, finest minds, which would have built up the shattered ruins of the world in due time. And many of the minds that are left are battered and stupefied; the avenues of thought are closed, and people are too tired, too old, or too dulled by violence, to build up anything at all. And besides these dulled and damaged minds, there are the great mass of the minds which neither catastrophe nor emotion nor violence nor age nor any other creature can blunt, because they have never been acute, have never had an edge, can cut no ice nor hew any new roads.
So, unless something drastic is done about it, it seems like a poor look-out.
This book contains the suggestion of a means of cure for this world-old ill, and is offered, free, to a probably inattentive and unresponsive Government, a close and interested study of whom has led the writer to believe that the erection of yet another Department might not be wholly uncongenial.
It will be observed that the general state of the world and of society in this so near and yet so unknown future has been but lightly touched upon. It is unexplored territory, too difficult for the present writer, and must be left to the forecastings of the better informed.
A word as to the title of this work, which may seem vague, or even foolish. Its source I have given. Food Orders we all know; What Not was not defined by the user of the phrase, except by the remark that it upset the country. The businesses described in this tale fulfil that definition; and, if they be not What Not, I do not know what is.
April, 1918.
CONTENTS
[NOTE.]
[APOLOGY]
[CHAPTER I. The Ministry]
[CHAPTER II. Little Chantreys]
[CHAPTER III. Brains Sunday]
[CHAPTER IV. Our Week]
[CHAPTER V. The Explanation Campaign]
[CHAPTER VI. The Simple Human Emotions]
[CHAPTER VII. The Breaking Point]
[CHAPTER VIII. On Fixed Hearts and Changing Scenes]
[CHAPTER IX. The Common Herd]
[CHAPTER X. A Ministry at Bay]
[CHAPTER XI. The Storming of the Hotel]
[CHAPTER XII. Debris]
[NEW FICTION]