“Your explanation is as usual most illuminating,” I replied, “and the patience with which you deal with my questions emboldens me to put to you some further difficulties that have been puzzling me.”
“Proceed,” replied Lickrod encouragingly.
“Well now,” I said, “your whole national culture is so elaborately perfect, from the standpoint of its basic principles, that it is certainly well worth studying by any student of sociology or politics or economics; yet we foreigners find ourselves hampered at many points whenever we wish to get into contact with certain kinds of facts. For instance, we may wish to find out what are the ideas, the current thoughts and feelings, of the various groups, and even individuals, who make up society. We cannot go and live with people and converse freely with them. I have not been able to understand why your Government takes such precautions to keep secret, as it were, facts which in any other country are as open as the day.”
“That is not at all difficult to answer by anyone who really understands the principles of our Culture, and I am surprised that none of the conductors who have instructed you have explained it—that is, if you have asked them,” he answered. “You have been hampered, you say. Yes, but you have been assisted too. You have been shown things in a way that would be impossible in most other countries within such a short time. Our Government has paid great attention to the instruction of foreigners. Instead of leaving them to gather all sorts of erroneous impressions, it provides them with authentic information. If, on the other hand, there are things which it does not wish foreigners to know, it takes care, and quite rightly, that they shall not obtain the information by any illicit means. For instance, if you were foolish enough to attempt to obtain information about our military affairs, you would find yourself against a blank wall; and, if I may say so, you might hurt your head against the wall. But then there are matters which, without being secret, cannot well be investigated by the individual inquirer. Take such a thing as the current thought of any particular class or group. Only a trained and well-equipped social-psychologist is capable of making such an inquiry. The liability to error is tremendous. All the books written by travellers reveal this. We do not wish to be exploited by casual and irresponsible travellers. We provide opportunities, under proper conditions, for expert investigators; but very few are willing to comply with the conditions. Besides, our Culture, like all the finest products of the human intellect, is a very delicate thing. When we have carefully educated our people in the Meccanian spirit we are not prepared to expose them to the insidious influences of irresponsible busybodies. Every Meccanian is valuable in our eyes, and just as we protect him from infection in the shape of physical disease, so we protect him from the more insidious but not less injurious influence of foreign ideas. You will find plenty of philosophical justification for that policy in the writings of Plato and Aristotle—two philosophers who are studied in all the foreign universities but whose systems of thought are utterly misunderstood except in Meccania.”
Chapter X.
Conversations
It must have been more than a week after my long talk with Conductor Lickrod that I was sitting one evening in the hotel with Mr. Johnson and a certain Francarian gentleman to whom he had introduced me, when the latter made a suggestion that has since proved very useful to me. Mr. Villele the Francarian is a short and rather stout man of middle age, with a pair of merry black eyes, a swarthy complexion, and dark hair beginning to turn grey. He professes to find Meccania and the Meccanians amusing, but I suspect from the nature of his sarcasms that he entertains a deep hatred of them. We were talking of my journal when he said, “And what is the use of it?”
“Well,” I said, “I do not flatter myself that I can produce a great literary work, but the facts I have been able to place on record are so interesting in themselves that I believe my countrymen would welcome a plain straightforward account of my visit to this most extraordinary country.”
“I have heard,” he said, “that the Chinese have very good verbal memories. Have you committed your record to memory in its entirety?”
“Why should I?” I replied; “it is to save my memory that I am taking the trouble of making such full notes, even of such things as conversations.”
“And how do you propose to get your journal out of the country?”
“I propose to take it with me when I return,” I said.
At this he turned to Johnson and laughed, but immediately apologised for his apparent rudeness.
“And what about the Censor?” he asked.
“Surely,” I replied, “these people take such precautions not to let us foreigners see anything they do not want us to see, that they cannot object to a faithful record being made of what they do permit us to see!”
“Then you have not even read Regulation 79 of the Law concerning Foreign Observers.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Simply that foreigners are not allowed to take out of the country anything they have not been permitted to bring in, except with the consent of the Chief Inspector of Foreign Observers.”
“And you think they will object?”
“I have not the slightest doubt.”
“But it is written partly in Chinese; they would have to translate it.”
“All the more reason for detaining it. If you ever get it again, it will be in a few years, after it has been translated for the benefit of the Sociological Section of the Ministry of Culture.”
“What do you advise me to do, then?” I asked.
“Have you any friends at the Chinese Embassy?” he asked.
“I have no personal friends. At least I have not troubled to inquire. I have had no business at the Embassy; there seemed no reason why I should trouble them.”
“There is a fellow-countryman of yours here in Mecco who is persona grata with the Authorities,” said Villele, “but he is rather a dark horse.”
“A dark horse?” I said.
“He is a sort of convert to Meccanianism. He has written books in appreciation of Meccanian principles, Meccanian ideals, Meccanian institutions, and so forth. They are eagerly read by the Meccanians. They even use them in their colleges. I have read them, and they seem to me very clever indeed. I translated them for the benefit of my countrymen, and I am not exactly an admirer of things Meccanian.”
I must have looked rather puzzled, for Mr. Johnson came to my rescue.
“Mr. Villele means,” he said, “that these books have a double meaning. I have read one of them. Under cover of the most exuberant flattery he gives such an impression of the cold-blooded devilishness of the system, that some of us suspect his real purpose to be that of exposing the whole business.”
“He knows more of Meccania than anyone who is not a high official,” said Villele; “and if you want to pursue your investigations any further, and incidentally get your manuscript conveyed out of the country, I should advise you to seek an interview with him.”
“Will that be possible,” I asked, “without arousing suspicion?”
“Oh, quite easily,” answered Villele. “He is above suspicion, if you are not,” he added, smiling. “He holds a weekly salon for foreigners, and you can easily get permission to attend. After that I leave it to you, and him.”
That evening we went on talking a long time. Mr. Villele related some remarkable things, but I was not sure whether he was merely making fun of the Meccanians.
“You have not seen much of the Meccanian women?” he remarked.