SQUISH.
(Being some notes on a bye-path in politics.)
The Board of Agriculture has been biding its time. In the fierce light of publicity which has been beating of late upon Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Winston Churchill and Sir Eric Geddes the attempt of this rustic Ministry to assert itself has passed almost unnoticed. Our gaze has been fixed upon the London railway termini, upon Warsaw and upon Belfast; we have been neglecting Campden (Glos.). Yet in that town, I read, "the Ministry of Agriculture has completed arrangements for a commercial course in the State Fruit and Vegetable College to instruct students in the manufacture of preserved fruit products."
I have considered the last part of the sentence quoted above very carefully in the light of the Rules and Regulations governing procedure in State Departments, Magna Carta, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Constitutions of Clarendon, and have come to the conclusion that it means "making jam." I am very sure, as the Prime Minister would say, that things are about to happen in preserved fruit products; things will become very much worse and very much sterner in jam. And if in jam why then also in jelly and in marmalade. Even at this moment in the offices of the Board of Agriculture there are a number of clerks, I suppose, sitting with schedules in front of them, something like this:—
| No. of candidates in training in | No. of candidates awaiting training in | No. of candidates fully trained | No. of candidates trained but not full | No. of candidates full, but not trained | Total | |
1. Jam | ||||||
2. Jelly | ||||||
3. Marmalade | ||||||
Total |
The perfect beauty of schedules framed upon this model is only to be apprehended by those who realise that when they are filled in and added up correctly the figure at the base of the vertical "Total" column on the right is identical with the figure on the right of the horizontal "Total" column at the base. It is the haunting magic of this fact that gives to Government clerks the wistful far-away look which they habitually wear.
It is not a good schedule this, of course—not a complete, not an exhaustive one. After a month or so it will be discovered with a cry of astonishment that no record has been kept of the number of candidates who are being trained in jam or jelly (combined) but not in marmalade, in jelly and marmalade (combined) but not in jam, and in jam and marmalade (combined) but not in jelly. And so a new and a greater schedule will have to be compiled. But even after that for a long time no one will notice that nothing has been said about the number of candidates who are being trained in jam and jelly and marmalade all combined and mashed up together, as they are at a picnic on the sands.
Of the many debatable issues raised by this new Government project, in so far as it affects the spheres of jelly and jam, I do not propose to speak now; I prefer to confine my attention for the moment to the fruit product which touches most nearly the home breakfast-table—namely, marmalade.
There are three schools of thought in marmalade. There are those who like the dark and very runny kind with large segments or wedges of peel. There are those who prefer a clear and jellified substance with tiny fragments of peel enshrined in it as the fly is enshrined in amber. And there are some, I suppose, who favour a kind of glutinous yellow composition, neither reactionary nor progressive, but something betwixt and between. There can be very little doubt which kind of marmalade the State Marmalade School will produce.