“Not on your life,” said Mr. Oates affably. “Seems to me a pretty appropriate name.” He drifted heavily from the room, and the four other men were left, staring at a riddle. “He’s going on with it, or, rather, they’re going on with it,” groaned Horace Hunter. “And what the devil is to be done now?” “It really looks as if he were right in calling it too late,” said Lord Normantowers bitterly. “I can’t think of anything to be done.” “I can,” said the Prime Minister. They all looked at him; but none of them could read the undecipherable subtleties in his old and wrinkled face under his youthful yellow hair. “The resources of civilization are not exhausted,” he said grimly. “That’s what the old governments used to say when they started shooting people. Well, I could understand you gentlemen feeling inclined to shoot people now. I suppose it seems to you that all your power in the State, which you wield with such public spirit of course; all Sir Horace’s health reforms, the Normantowers’s new estate, and so on, are all broken to bits, to rotten little bits of rusticity. What’s to become of a governing class if it doesn’t hold all the land, eh? Well, I’ll tell you. I know the next move, and the time has come to take it.” “But what is it?” demanded Sir Horace. “The time has come,” said the Prime Minister, “to Nationalize the Land.” Sir Horace Hunter rose from his chair, opened his mouth, shut it, and sat down again, all with what he himself might have called a reflex action. “But that is Socialism!” cried Lord Normantowers, his eyes standing out of his head. “True Socialism, don’t you think?” mused the Prime Minister. “Better call it True Socialism; just the sort of thing to be remembered at elections. Theirs is Socialism, and ours is True Socialism.” “Do you really mean, my lord,” cried Hunter in a heat of sincerity stronger than the snobbery of a lifetime, “that you are going to support the Bolshies?” “No,” said Eden, with the smile of a sphinx. “I mean the Bolshies are going to support me. Idiots!” After a silence, he added in a more wistful tone: “Of course, as a matter of sentiment, it is a little sad. All our fine old English castles and manors, the homes of the gentry ... they will become public property, like post offices, I suppose. When I think of the happy hours I have myself passed at Normantowers--” He smiled across at the nobleman of that name and went on. “And Sir Horace has now, I believe, the joy of living in Warbridge Castle--fine old place. Dear me, yes, and I think Mr. Low has a castle, though the name escapes me.” “Rosewood Castle,” said Mr. Low rather sulkily. “But I say,” cried Sir Horace, rising, “what becomes of ‘Don’t Nationalize but Rationalize’?”