That autumn was a feverish period in the Ministry's career. Many persons have been called upon, for one cause or another, to wait in nervous anticipation hour by hour for the signal which shall herald their own destruction. Thus our ancestors at the latter end of the tenth century waited expectantly for the crack of doom; but the varying emotions with which they awaited it can only be guessed at. More vivid to the mind and memory are the expectant and waiting first days of August, 1914. On the other hand, the emotions of cabinets foreseeing their own resignation, of the House of Lords anticipating abolition, of criminals awaiting sentence, of newspapers desperately staving off extinction, of the crews of foundered ships struggling to keep afloat, of government departments anticipating their own untimely end, are mysteries veiled from the outside world, sacred ground which may not be trodden by the multitude. The Ministry of Brains that autumn was fighting hard and gallantly for its life. It was an uphill struggle; Sisyphus pushing up the mountain the stone of human perverseness, human stupidity, human self-will, which threatened all the time to roll back and grind him to powder. Concessions were made here, pledges given there (even, here or there, occasionally fulfilled). New Instructions were issued daily, old ones amended or withdrawn, far-reaching and complicated arrangements made with various groups and classes of people, "little ministries" set up all over the country to administrate the acts regionally, soothing replies and promises dropped like leaves in autumn by the Parliamentary Secretary, to be gathered up, hoarded, and brooded over in many a humble, many a stately home. It is superfluous to recapitulate these well-worn, oft-enacted, pathetic incidents of a tottering ministry. Ministries, though each with a special stamp in hours of ease, are all much alike when pain and anguish wring their brows. With arts very similar each to other they woo a public uncertain, coy and hard to please; a public too ready to believe the worst of them, too pitiless and unimaginative towards their good intentions, too extreme to mark what is done amiss, too loth to admit success, too ready to condemn failure without measuring the strength of temptation.