Of course, what was really happening was simply " inflation."
We were all just being " inflated," and we didn't know it. The merry banker who shoved a hundred sovereigns across the counter, in that pleasant way he had, why he was just inflated, that was all. The kindly broker who gave us—practically gave us—the shares in the Andusinian Asbestos Abattoir, he was just inflated. The merry waiter who squirted the champagne all over, our shirt front and wouldn't charge for it—inflated. The jolly clergyman who ran the Mothers' and Children's lottery on the Abyssinia • Sweepstake and cleaned up— you remember,—and cleaned up enough to send all the Home for Incurables to the seaside, and they never came back . drowned or something, but it didn't matter. Well, of course, the whole thing was just inflation. The Government too.. There was that terribly funny speech by the. Chancellor of the Exchequer—nineteen twenty something, .wasn't it ?—in which he said that he was afraid there was going to be a surplus ; and the House roared !
All the world in those big and bright days seemed infected with something. Scientists tell us that there is a gas that could do it, a thing called by the technical name of protoxide of nitrogen, but also known as " laughing gas." It was just as if we had each had a whiff of prot- oxide every hour or so, and were inflated with it. It is just possible, so the geologists say, that this gas lurks in the depths and crevices of the earth under our feet and at times filters through and infects us. So that was what was wrong. We were all full of gas. When the Prime Minister—I forget which one—made that splendid, buoyant, hopeful speech, ending with the words, ".Eng- land ! England ! " and then fell over backwards while the house rocked and cheered—well, he was just full of gas. - The merry fellows on the golf links losing three- shilling balls on every other drive ; the hilarious meetings of the shareholders, the gaiety of the Federated Charities' Tag Day : all of it just gas, merely inflation.
Too bad.
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