"The Nursery [lusian Undey this heading a contribu-for to "The Times" Literary Supplement has an article which makes delightful reading by reason of its refreshing humour and good sense. Most of us, says the writer, have, sooner or later in our lives, suffered a shock of disillusionment on one point, if not on others. While we were children, perhaps even into manhood or womanhood, we belie ed that. the world was on the whole well managed, or at least managed by an exalted' set of people whose business it was to manage it. All things happened, we supposed, by the design of these people, who could, if pressed, give a reason for all things. There was a world of them. Kings, Queens, Ministers. Archbishops, and the like, a world of very sumptuous offices, all cusioned like a first-class carriage, with stately desks and ink-pots, and chairs perhaps canopied, where orders were given and then carried out, with the sometimes bewildering results we saw. And then. suddenly or more gradually, we discovered that our life was not so managed hi at all, was indeed a hand-to-mouth business in which anything might happen, such as a great war, or an earthquake, or a revolution: and thad, in case of such a catastrophe, all of us, the managers included, would run about, blindly like ants when their nest is stirred up by stick. There are managers, we discovered, but a great part of their duty is to explain what happens, after it has happened, as not being inconsistent with their Managing. They have a pretence, like that of many shops, that they do everything by design, and that it is all what ought to be done. If they make a mistake, they have a for-inula for it; but, all the same, mistakes are made all qhe time, as in the nursery or at cricket. The great world is, in fact, just Jike the little world we know, and no more secure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.