Prime Minister English people gave still less thought to the others, But in the shadow of this great figure Sir John Anderson, who almost eats heather for breakfast, had slipped into the ranks of the Government, The handsome Mr. Eden from Warwickshire, who had foreseen so much of this war, was called by the Prime Minister, and no one remarked the meagre figure of Mr. W. S. Morrison popping into the new Ministry of Food (where he has nearly finished the job of breaking the hearts of the sanners whose purses he had shattered when Minister of Agriculture, for no good purpose at all). Now his entry is more important than one may think who does not know the tactics of this Scottish conquest. It meant that in the Government there are three Scots ex-Ministers of Agriculture—Sir John Gilmour, Mr. Walter Elliot and Maister Mor-r-ris-son Remember that every autumn and every spring English farmers have been misled to look to Scotland for our seed oats, wheat, potatoes, and so forth, Scottish farmers become rich selling seed and, with the seed, they export Ministers of Agriculture to ruin farm lands, Subtle! What Gilmour failed to do Elliot certainly did, and Morrison was only driven out when the Suffolk farmers marched on London last summer, armed with their bankruptcy 's come down to hard figures.
At this stage the meek English Government—this theoretical score of honest Englishmen—included Maisters Malcolm MacDonald, Walter Elliot, Sir John Gilmour, D. J. Colville, Sir John Anderson, W. S. Morrison and Euan Wallace, They felt fairly secure, but they really had not a majority, though majorities in these days seem to matter very little, and they, with their tiny population, could not think in such terms. Still, some of them had been to school in England and had learnt the strange saying: "In Rome do as Rome does," and so they felt that it was necessary to reinforce their numbers so that these English could have by no means all the say in the government of their own country when the war should be over and the Government would have shrunk to the normal score of men.
Recently the blow fell and one heard that Sir Andrew Duncan and Sir John Reith had been made chiefs of the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Information respectively. So tac Government who run this most enlightened of all countries, this greatest civilizing force on the face of the globe, this Empire which dwarfs even the majesty of Rome, now includes nine Scots!
And so, by means that had never been invented before—if one excludes the Americans in the Philippines—the Scots chose the right moment, and now, when all attention is taken up with the most fanatical enemy they have ever faced, they, quietly, and smoothly, have so entrenched themselves in the Government of England that when peace comes all shall see that they—the Scots—have won the war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.