And then, mark you, one fine day the President of the Board of Agriculture will turn round and issue a communiqué to the Press like this:—
"Preferential treatment in the supply of sugar for the purpose of conducting the processes of manufacture of fruit products will henceforward be given to those who possess the Campden diploma for proficiency in the conduct of the above-named processes."
And where is your freedom then? Cooks and housewives will be condemned either to make State marmalade or to make no marmalade at all. Personally I am inclined to think that the President of the Board of Agriculture will go further than this. I think that encouragement will be given to those who take the State Marmalade course to follow it up with a subsidiary or finishing course of wasp treatment.
And in wasp treatment also there are three schools. There is what is called the Churchill school, which hits out right and left with an infuriated spoon. Then there is the Montagu school, which takes no provocative action, but sits still and says, "They won't sting you if you don't irritate them;" it says this especially when they are flying round somebody else's head. And lastly there is the Medium school, which, choosing the moment when the wasp is busily engaged, presses it down gently and firmly into the marmalade, so that the last spoonfuls of the dish are not so much a fruit product as a kind of entomological preserve. The last way, I think, will be the State way of dealing with wasps, and a reward will probably be offered for the stings of all wasps embalmed on Coalition lines.
The electorate has stuck to the Government through the Peace Treaty, through Mesopotamia, through Ireland and through coal. Can it stick to them, is what I ask, through marmalade?
Evoe.
MENS CONSCIA MALI.
The lightning flashed and flickered, roared the thunder,
Down came the rain, and in the usual way