f the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness
for its possession. One huge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell
suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid
Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond
their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle
suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the
portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political
parties, Society hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists,
and distinguished aeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed
throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the
shades of the Inferno, smiling still from force of habit, but with the
fearsome smiling rage of baffled effort. The poster bore no fulsome
allusions to the merits of the new breakfast food, but a single grim
statement ran in bold letters along its base: "They cannot buy it now."

Spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of
duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands
of respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in
a Turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had
ordered them to take Turkish baths; if you told them in return that you
went there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at
the frivolity of your motive. In the same way, whenever a massacre of
Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has
been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another, no one seems
to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their neighbours
now and then.

And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would have eaten
Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its
advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to
clamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig-tailed
daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of
its preparation. On the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was
partaken of in silence. Once the womenfolk discovered that it was
thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their households
knew no bounds. "You haven't eaten your Filboid Studge!" would be
screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he hurried weariedly from the
breakfast-table, and his evening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up
mess which wou