The Old Indispensables a Romance of Whitehall

r-Secretary. Director of Circumvention in the Circumlocution Ofice. As8istant Director of Circumvention. Members of the Higher Division employed in the Circumvention Branch. Members of the Second Diuiaion employed in the same. Temporary Assistant ernployed in the same. Private Secretames to the Director of Circumvention. Financial Adviser in the Circumlocution Ofice. Director of Establishment in the same. Directo of Delays and Evasions in the same. Members of the Towle Com- mittee of Enquiry into the Orgazisntion of the Cir- eumlocution Ofice. Private Secretaries to the Secretary of State. MISS JOAN MAINWARING A temporaw woman clerk employed in the Circumuention. Branch. DAPHNE PEYLLIS A temporary girl clerk employed in the same. Nom.-Certain of the incidents in this book are founded on incidents which actually occurred, but no attempt has been made, or, I hope, will be suspected, at the portraiture of real persons. E. S. IT was comparatively early in the war that the Cir- cumvention Branch of the Circumlocution Office out- grew its limited accommodation and was obliged to move. It happened, in fact, before the Office of Works had discovered the enchanting possibilities of the great hotels. Some time had still to elapse before the heads of newly created branches were to sit in magnificent banqueting halls and thence to issue their orders to clerks working amid the terrifying wall- papers of the top-floor bedrooms. It did one happen that a potentate detected in himself the symptoms of incipient agoraphobia and removed to a bedroom, installing his typist in the banqueting-room in his stead. But that belongs to another chapter of our rough island story. Not yet, at the time of which I write, was the civilian visitor, withdrawing from the ,presence of the minor omnipotent who had refused him a permit for the release of shampooing oil, abashed and perplexed by the sight of an unobtrusive cupboard enigmaticalIy labelled with the word BOOTS. The ideas of the Office of Works were still pedestrian and narrow in their range. It was imagined that for official purposes an office was desirable. But the needs of the Circumvention Branch were growing acute. It had been little more than a matter for jesting when four boy clerks were sent to join a room which had previously been thought overcrowded by two Second Division clerks and their five temporaty 9 assistants. It caused no inconvenience at all when all the occupants of this room, now swelled to a total number of twenty-three, were driven into the corridor to make room for fowc hopeless failures of superior rank whom the Derogation of Crown Appanages Office had cheerfully lent to assist the Circumvention Branch in its labours. It is true that some remark was occasioned when a Higher Division clerk albeit a very little one, like the souls of the penguins was also turned out of his room. But they put him at a comet, a distinguished though draughty position, arranged a screen round him and gave him a shorthand typist who could not spell and of whom he was desperately afraid. Thus the claims of caste were satisfied. The crisis came at last quite suddenly. His Majestys Secretaty of State for Circumlocutoy Aff airs felt himself growing a little stale and departed from his rule of ceasing work only to sleep and waking only to resume his labours... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.