The military mind is, it is generally agreed, conservative to the verge of sheer stupidity, but even the military mind is becoming infected with the new ideas. Under the influence of Captain Liddel Hart, the military representative of the prophetic school with which we are concerned, it will surely come to recognize “the moral objective of war.”[7] Even this author is conservative, in regarding tanks and aeroplanes as being the principal weapons of the future. With regard to the immediate future he may be right. But the implication of his general thesis is that all these weapons will ultimately give place to subtler ones of psychological design. Hardly less effective than the ‘death ray’ in bending the enemy’s will is the rumour that one has been invented. And rumours can be invented daily in His Majesty’s Office of Propaganda. And why stop at the control of fear? Why not apply psychology throughout the whole of the enemy’s mental life? Perhaps, in the last of all wars to end war, victory will fall to the side which first makes its enemy laugh. The power of a sense of humour, at any rate, is a terrible weapon in the negotiation of peace. Our late enemies would scarcely have fared so badly had they been less sparingly endowed with it in war. [7] See _Paris, or the Future of War_. Humour has its applications in peace as in war. Under universal Scientific Management, the Government will vie with the underground railways for the control of public laughter. The Catholic Church, in enlisting the aid of Chesterton and Ronald Knox against its irrefutable but dreary adversaries, has for once in modern history placed itself in the vanguard of a winning cause. The weapon has curious possibilities, but is one difficult to employ. Quick wits sensitive to the trend of fashion are the essential qualifications for a Minister of Public Humour. For the joke is the most ephemeral of all works of art. It takes years of patient research, now, to see the jokes of classical antiquity, and pages of solemn argument to defend the taste of Shakespeare in his humour. Differences of humour separate age from age and class from class. It is the weakest link which binds the intellectuals to the cause of labour. One might expect this weapon to favour established institutions, for only the fat and prosperous can laugh with merriment, but by the same token the jokes of Marie Antoinette were unintelligible to the hungry. Therefore the lean and plodding journalists will come into their own and take their place among the expert advisors to the future Ministry of Talents. IV