"All the same," said Nicholas Chester to his colleagues, "there appears to me to be a considerably higher percentage of intelligent looking infants of under three years of age than there were formerly. Intelligent looking, that is to say, _for_ infants. Infants, of course, are not intelligent creatures. Their mental level is low. But I observe a distinct improvement."
A distinct improvement was, in fact, discernible.
But, among the Great Unimproved, and among those who did not want improvement, discontent grew and spread; the slow, aggrieved discontent of the stupid, to whom personal freedom is as the breath of life, to whom the welfare of the race is as an idle, intangible dream, not worth the consideration of practical men and women.
In December Dora did a foolish thing. It is needless to say that she did other foolish things in other months; it is to be feared that she had been born before the Brains Acts; her mental category must be well below C3. But this particular folly is selected for mention because it had a disastrous effect on the already precarious destiny of the Ministry of Brains. Putting out a firm and practised hand, she laid it heavily and simultaneously upon four journals who were taking a rebellious attitude towards the Brains Act--the _Nation_, _Stop It_, the _Herald_, and the _Patriot_. Thus she angered at one blow considerable sections of the Thoughtful, the Advanced, the Workers (commonly but erroneously known as the proletariat) and the Vulgar.
"Confound the fools," as Chester bitterly remarked; but the deed was then done.
"How long," Vernon Prideaux asked, "will it take governments to learn that revolutionary propaganda disseminated all over the country don't do as much harm as this sort of action?"
Chester was of opinion that, give the Ministry of Brains its chance, let it work for, say, fifty years, and even governments might at the end of that time have become intelligent enough to acquire such elementary pieces of knowledge. If only the Ministry _were_ given its chance, if it could weather the present unrest, let the country get used to it.... Custom: that was the great thing. People settled down under things at last. All sorts of dreadful things. Education, vaccination, taxation, sanitation, representation.... It was only a question of getting used to them.