"
"It is," answered Bob. "The fact is, I got hold of a marvellous feller
at Birmingham." He laughed sardonically. "I hope to go down to history
as the first judge that ever voluntarily retired because of deafness.
And now, thanks to this feller at Birmingham, I can hear better than
seventy-five per cent of the Bench. The Lord Chancellor gave me a hint
I might care to return, and so save a pension to the nation. I told
him I'd begin to think about that when he'd persuaded the Board of
Works to ventilate my old Court." He laughed again. "And now I see
the Press Bureau is enunciating the principle that it won't permit
criticism that might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in
the administration of affairs."
Bob opened his mouth wide and kept it open.
Sir Francis, with no diminution of the mild and bland benevolence of
his detachment, said:
"The voice is the Press Bureau's voice, but the hands are the hands
of the War Office. Can we reasonably hope to win, or not to lose, with
such a mentality at the head? I cannot admit that the War Office has
changed in the slightest degree in a hundred years. From time to time
a brainy civilian walks in, like Cardwell or Haldane, and saves it
from becoming patently ridiculous.
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