community on the road from Ely. Happily the loss of life was slight: only five of our dear subjects paid the penalty of Death Deviation, and are now for ever beyond the reach of our most loving care. We need not remind you that in the bad old days thousands of patients and delinquents perished on the roads. They gave their lives, we will not say gladly, but ungrudgingly in the service of that most beastly and insatiable of deities, the God of Speed. Whether it be true, as some have claimed, that the growing disregard for human life that made possible, indeed inevitable, the three world wars was due to that invention, the internal, and infernal, combustion engine, we cannot say. We ourselves have never disguised the horror with which we regarded it, and accordingly we limited the pace at which our subjects could travel to a maximum pace of seven and a half miles an hour. During the many years in which it has been our painful duty to rule over you there has not been, until now, one single case of death on the roads. "Patients and delinquents! "It has always been our principle to reduce as far as may be those instincts of yours (alas, too many) that tend to homicide or suicide. It is our mission to save you from yourselves. If you knew how difficult that task was, you would perhaps behave with more consideration. Naturally you regard us as a tyrant, and naturally we behave like one, for even Dictators behave as they are expected to behave. Judging by the complaints that reach us from various sections of the community, bitterly attacking other sections of the community, sometimes even demanding their extinction, it appears that you would like us to behave like a tyrant, and so we have and shall, for it is our principle to give our people what they want. "Discontent and unrest and murmuring there will always be where you, our dear, dear people, are concerned. For your sakes, much more than for our own, we do not wish to see rebellion raise its ugly head, and this, our statisticians tell us, is bound to happen if so much as twenty-six per cent of the population feels, or thinks it feels, a grievance. We are not betraying any secret, either ours or yours, when we say that our main concern for you, our chief headache, to use one of your own vulgarisms, is to keep your bloodlust down. And by bloodlust we do not only mean your strange propensity for shedding other people's blood, but your still stranger wish to spill your own. "Accordingly we devised a system of safety valves, through which, when your haemophilia had passed the danger mark, it could escape. One of these was the Motor Expeditions (Country) Service, commonly known as Rural Rides, a regrettable and ridiculous survival from the Bad Old Times, but one which, we were assured, would release a three and a half per cent pressure of unrest. For several years this service fulfilled its function, and that apparently irreducible element of disobedience in you seemed to be appeased. But not long ago the Discontentometer showed a sudden rise; and it was then, after much painful deliberation, that we decided to make the experiment of the Death and Glory Service, the outcome of which you all know. Five human units lost their lives and twenty-seven were injured. The experiment seemed to be successful; the Discontentometer recorded a sharp drop of nineteen and a half degrees. A cry of horror and indignation went up; everybody criticized everybody else and we ourselves, yes we, were blamed for having allowed the incident to happen. Thankfully we suspended the provision for accidents in the Motor Expeditions (Country) Service and decreed that the Service should be conducted without mishaps as before. We thought that this would be your wish, as it was ours. "Patients and delinquents! "We were mistaken. Again the Discontentometer has risen and it is still rising. Can it be that our subjects have not learned their lesson? Do they still wish to spill their own blood, or drink the blood of
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