a secret or conduct
a bargain if your tongue is uncontrollable? What is the use of Jones
explaining to his wife that he has been kept late at the office if his
tongue goes on to say, entirely without his knowledge or consent, that had
he declared "no trumps" in that last hand he would have been in pocket by
his evening at the club? I see horrible visions of domestic complications
and public disaster arising from this not uncommon habit.

And yet might there not be gain also from a universal practice of uttering
our thoughts aloud? Imagine a world in which nobody had any secrets from
anybody--could have no secrets from anybody. I see the Kaiser, after
consciously declaring that his only purpose is peace, unconsciously
blurting out to the British Ambassador that the ultimatum to Serbia is a
"plant"--that what Germany means is war, that she proposes to attack
Belgium, and so on. And I see the British Ambassador, having explained that
England is entirely free from commitments, adding dreamily, "But if there's
a war we shall be in it." In the same way Jones, after making Smith a firm
offer of L30 for his horse, would say, absentmindedly, "Of course it would
be cheap at L50, and I might spring L55 if he is stiff about it."

It would be a world in which lies would have no value and deception would
be a waste of time--a world in which truth would no longer be at the bottom
of the well, but on the tip of every man's tongue. We should have all the
rascals in prison and all the dishonest traders in the bankruptcy court.
Secret diplomacy would no longer play with the lives of men, for there
would be no secrets. Those little perverse concealments that wreck so many
lives would vanish. You, sir, who find it so easy to nag at home and so
difficult to say the kind thing that you know to be true, would be
discovered to your great advantage and to the peace of your household.

Yes, I think the world would go very well if we all had tongues that told
our true thoughts in spite of us. But what a lot of us would be found out.
My own face crimsons at the thought. So, I think, does yours.

ON BOSWELL AND HIS MIRACLE

As I passed along Great Queen Street the other evening, I saw that
Boswell's house, so long threatened, is at last falling a victim to the
housebreaker. The fact is one of the by-products of the war. While the Huns
are abroad in Belgium the Vandals are busy at home. You may see them at
work on every hand. The few prec