"We have said all along," said _The Times_ (anticipating the _Hidden Hand_, which had not yet made up its mind), "that the Government should take a strong line in this matter. They must not trust to voluntary effort; we say, and we believe that, as always, we voice the soundest opinion in the country, that it is up to the Government to take the measures which it has decided, upon mature consideration, to be for the country's good. Though we have given every possible support to the great voluntary effort recently made, truth compels us to state that the results are proving disappointing. Compulsion must follow, and the sooner the Government make up their minds to accept this fact the better advised it will be. Surely if there is one thing above all others which the Great War (so prolific in lessons) has taught us, it is that compulsion is not tyranny, nor law oppression. Let the Government, too long vacillating, act, and act quickly, and they will find a responsive and grateful nation ready to obey." Thus _The Times_, and thus, in a less dignified choice of language, many lesser organs. To which the _Herald_ darkly rejoined, "If the Government tries this on, let it look to itself." "It'll have to come," said Vernon Prideaux to Kitty Grammont at lunch. They were lunching at one of those underground resorts about which, as Kitty said, you never know, some being highly respectable, while others are not. Kitty, with her long-lashed, mossy eyes and demure expression, looked and felt at home among divans for two, screens, powdered waitresses, and rose-shaded lights; she had taken Prideaux there for fun, because among such environment he looked a stranger and pilgrim, angular, fastidious, whose home was above. Kitty liked to study her friends in different lights, even rose-shaded ones, and especially one who, besides being a friend, was her departmental superior, and a coming, even come, young man of exceptional brilliance, who might one day be ruling the country. "If it does," said Kitty, "we shall have to go, that's all. No more compulsion is going to be stood at present. Nothing short of another war, with a military dictatorship and martial law, will save us." "We stood compulsory education when there was no war," Prideaux pointed out. "We've stood vaccination, taxation, every conceivable form of interference with what we are pleased to call our liberty. This is no worse; it's the logical outcome of State government of the individual. Little by little, precept upon precept, line upon line, these things grow, till we're a serf state without realising it.... After all, why not? What most people mean by freedom would be a loathsome condition; freedom to behave like animals or lunatics, to annoy each other and damage the State. What's the sense of it? Human beings aren't up to it, that's the fact."