a different diet: he blamed the Eugenics Section, too, for not being able to produce a tougher strain of workers. Reduction of working hours should not be resorted to, he maintained, until every other expedient had been tried: it was so very difficult to increase them afterwards. Besides, in the Strenuous Month, it had been proved over and over again that the men could easily stand a longer working day without physical injury. "And what is the Strenuous Month?" I asked. "Oh, of course," he said, "you have not studied our industrial system as a factor of military organisation. There is a very good account of it in Mr. Kwang's _Triumphs of Meccanian Culture_. Briefly it is this. Every year, but not always in the same month, the signal is given for the Strenuous Month to begin. The workmen then work at top speed, and for as many hours a day as the Industrial Psychologists determine, for thirty days consecutively. It is excellent training, and incidentally has a very good effect on the output for the other months of the year. The men are so glad when it is over that, unconsciously, they work better for the rest of the year." "But I should have thought they would be so fatigued that you would lose as much as you gain, or more perhaps," I said. "Oh no," he answered; "they are allowed one day's complete rest, which they must spend in bed; their diet is arranged, both during the time and for a month after. They must go to bed for two hours extra every night for the following month. The effect is most beneficial. They like it too, on the whole, for they get paid for all the extra product--that is to say, it is added to their pension fund." "But I thought the pension fund was so calculated," I said, "that it tallies exactly with what is required for the support of each man from the time he ceases to be able to work." "Certainly," he replied. "After fifty-five most of our men work an hour a day less every two years, with variations according to their capacity, as tested by the medical examinations." "Then how do they benefit," I asked, "by the product of the strenuous month, if it is only added to their pension and not paid at the time?" "If it is added to the pension fund," he replied, "it is obvious that they must benefit." I did not pursue the matter further. He asked me if I had been to the Annual Medical Exhibition. I said I had not heard of it, and did not suppose I should receive permission to see it, as I was not altogether well qualified to understand it. He said it was most interesting. He was not a medical man himself, of course; but as an officer in the army he had had to get some acquaintance with physiology. "The medical menagerie gets more interesting every year," he said. "The medical menagerie!" I exclaimed. "Whatever is that?"