Mr. Jenkins went on. "Other things are said; but I daresay they are mere rumour. Queer things get said about public men. I met someone the other day who lives in Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the Chilterns, and who has a curious and no doubt entirely erroneous idea about you.... Well, in the interests of the country, Mr. Chester (I have the welfare of the Ministry of Brains very much at heart, I may say; I am entirely with you in regarding intelligence as the Coming Force), I should like to be in a position to discredit these rumours. If you won't mind my saying so, they tell against you very seriously. You see, it is generally known that you are uncertificated for matrimony and parentage, if I may mention it. And once people get into their heads the idea that, while forcing these laws on others, you are evading them yourself ... well, you may imagine it might damage your work considerably. You and I, Mr. Chester, know what the public are.... I should be glad to have your authority to contradict these rumours, therefore." Chester said, "Certainly. You may contradict anything you please. I shall raise no objection. Is that all?" Mr. Jenkins hesitated. "I cannot, of course, contradict the rumours without some assurance that they are false...." They had an interesting conversation on this topic for ten minutes more, which I do not intend to record in these pages. So many conversations are, for various reasons, not recorded. Conversations, for instance, at Versailles, when the allied powers of the world sit together there behind impenetrable curtains, through the rifts of which only murmurs of the unbroken harmony which always prevails between allies steal through to a waiting world. Conversations between M. Trotzky and representatives of the German Government before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Conversations between the President of the Board of Trade and the Railway Companies when the price of travel is being increased; between governments and capitalists when elections are to be fought or newspapers to be bought; between Jane Austen's heroes and heroines in the hour when their passion is declared. For quite different reasons, all these conversations are left to the imagination, and I propose to leave to the same department of the reader's mind the interview between Mr. Percy Jenkins and the Minister of Brains. I will merely mention that the talking was, for the most part, done by Mr. Jenkins. The reasons for this were two. One was that Mr. Jenkins was a fluent talker, and the Minister capable of a taciturnity not invariably to be found in our statesmen. Both have their uses in the vicissitudes of public life. Both can be, if used effectively, singularly baffling to those who would probe the statesman's mind and purposes. But fluency is, to most (it would seem) the easier course. * * * * * Anyhow this was how the _Patriot_ campaign started. It began with an Open Letter. "_To the Minister of Brains._