The Ministry were so busy that many of the staff took no holiday beyond Christmas Day itself. Bank Holidays are, as everyone who has tried knows, an excellent time for working in one's office, because there are no interruptions from the outside world, no telephoning, no visitors, no registry continually sending up incoming correspondence. The clamorous, persistent public fade away from sound and sight, and ministries are left undistracted, to deal with them for their good in the academic seclusion of the office. If there was in this world an eternal Bank Holiday (some, but with how little reason, say that this awaits us in heaven) ministries would thrive better; governing would then become like pure mathematics, an abstract science unmarred by the continual fret and jar of contact with human demands, which drag them so roughly, so continually, down to earth.
On Boxing Day the Minister himself worked all day, and about a quarter of the higher staff were in their places. But by seven o'clock only the Minister remained, talking to Prideaux in his room.
The procession, at first in the form of four clouds each no bigger than a man's hand, trailed from out the north, south, east and west, and coalesced in Trafalgar Square. From there it marched down Whitehall to Westminster, and along the Embankment. It seemed harmless enough; a holiday crowd of men and women with banners, like the people who used to want Votes, or Church Disestablishment, or Peace, or Cheap Food. The chief difference to be observed between this and those old processions was that a large number in this procession seemed to fall naturally and easily into step, and marched in time, like soldiers. This was a characteristic now of most processions; that soldier's trick, once learnt, is not forgotten. It might have set an onlooker speculating on the advantages and the dangers of a nation of soldiers, that necessary sequence to an army of citizens.
The procession drew up outside the Ministry of Brains, and resolved itself into a meeting. It was addressed in a short and stirring speech from the Ministry steps by the president of the Stop It League, a fiery young man with a megaphone, who concluded his remarks with "Isn't it up to all who love freedom, all who hate tyranny, to lose no time, but to wreck the place where these things are done? That's what we're here to do to-night—to smash up this hotel and show the government what the men and women of England mean! Come on, boys!"
Too late the watching policemen knew that this procession and this meeting meant business, and should be broken up.
The Minister and Prideaux listened, from an open window, to the speaking outside. "Rendle," said Prideaux. "Scandalous mismanagement. What have the police been about? It's too late now to do much.... Do they know we are here, by the way? Probably not."
"They shall," replied Chester, and stepped out on to the balcony.
There was a hush, then a tremendous shout.
"It's the Minister! By God, it's Nicky Chester, the man who's made all the trouble!"
A voice rose above the rest.