CARD TRICK
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" AKE a card—any card," said Maggie's brother
T
Cromwell. "That's right—it's the Jack of Spades." "That was the one you wanted me to take," grumbled Maggie. "You had a perfectly free choice as the Socialist said when he nationalized transport," said Cromwell. "All the Same, I'll be like the Conservatives and give you another chance. Just take a card. Are you perfectly sure it is the one you want and not the one I want you to want?
You are sure you would not prefer this one?"
" No," said Maggie, "This is my choice."
"Very well then, take it," said Cromwell. _" And turn me over to a special advisory group if it is not the Jack of Spades again."
"1 can see the trick now," said Maggie. "Let me try just once more."
"Shall we say for a shilling or a half-crown?" asked Cromwell.
"When Cromwell is prepared to bet, you can be sure it is on a certainty," I said. "What I cannot understand is this sudden interest in sleight of hand." .
"It was something you said the other day," explained Cromwell, "about receiving a couple of booklets looking almost exactly the same even to the title, but completely different inside. The name's the same but I cannot remember what it was."
"Britain's Transport Crisis," I told him. "The booklets are like nearly identical twins. You can hardly tell them apart.'2,
' "But I suppose you can tell them together," said Maggie.
"The odd thing is," I said, "that although the subject is the same, each author seems to be talking about something different.
"And did you not say there would be a whole series?" asked Cromwell.
"That is so," I agreed. "If the family face is carried on, we shall have a transport crisis to fit nearly everybody's taste."
"Exactly my point," said Cromwell. "It is just like my pack of cards. When the publishers have a complete set of booklets, they will be able to hand out the one that fits the customer, while leaving him with the impression that he is choosing for himself."
"I thought that is what you were up to," said Maggie. "There will be nothing to stop anybody getting hold of several versions," I objected.
Game Called Murder "And that can be a danger,Cromwell agreed. "It is the same with my pack of cards. I can remember being asked to help out in a party game called Murder, where each person takes a card, the lights go out, and whoever holds the Jack of Spades has to pretend to murder somebody. After which there is an inquest to find whodunit."
"The only time I ever played that game," said Maggie, "nobody could find the switch to put the lights on again, so that the game was never finished. But I cannot remember anybody complaining."
"It was different this time," said Cromwell. "I have never seen young couples so glad at a bit of illumination. I was the only one with a pack of cards, and I saw to it that each person picked the hek of Spades. When the lights finally went up it looked like a shambles." "I agree that transport can be murder," said Maggie, "or near murder, especially when I want to get on a bus in the rush hour. I suppose that is what is meant by a transport crisis," "May I hazard a guess," said Cromwell, "that the two people you were talking about were too busy taking the global or panoramic view to bother their heads with the corns of the pedestrians."
"There is something in that," I agreed. "Mr. Geoffrey Wilson actually begins by saying that all over the world there is a crisis in transport."
"It makes the whole thing seem hopeless from the start," said Maggie. "All that is needed now is for somebody to say that there has always been a crisis. Then we could be thoroughly miserable together."
"That is almost the view taken by the other writer, Mr. Ernest Davies," I said. "There has hardly been a time since the First World War, he thinks, when transport has not appeared to be in a state of crisis."
"Does he really say there has been a crisis all that time?" asked Cromwell.
Leave a Gap "Well, on looking more closely into the matter," I admitted, "I find that he does leave a gap not fully explained between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of denationalization."
"Perhaps Cromwell's friend Bloggs could deal with the missing period when it comes to his turn to be asked to write a booklet," Maggie suggested.
"It is more likely," I said, "that Bloggs believes the crisis is over for good now that he finds he has no balancing charges to pay."
"He still has to pay some," said Cromwell, "and that is crisis enough for him."
"And I suppose the crisis becomes a catastrophe if the grant is refused," I said.
"When Bloggs comes to write his contribution to the symposium," said Cromwell, "which is bound to happen sooner or later, he will argue that a transport crisis can arise only when there is an urgent need for transport and none available."
"There he would meet with the agreement of Mr. Wilson," I said, "who holds the opinion that transport needs have been consistently underestimated. On the other hand Mr. Davies believes there is too much transport chasing too little traffic."
"Bloggs would agree with that as well," said Cromwell.
"The simple solution of his transport crisis, is to grant Bloggs everything for which he asks," I said. "But if that were generally applied it would mean abolishing the licensing system."
"Bloggs would not dream of advocating anything so drastic as that," said Cromwell. "He is a great man for being guided by the majority. He knows that most other hauliers, probably the great majority, are against any considerable change in the licensing system, whereas very few of them, sometimes only one or two, come forward to oppose his applications in the traffic courts."
"Surely the railways object," I said.
"But they take this attitude towards nearly every application," said Cromwell, "merely on principle. Nobody can take their customary and automatic objections as a serious contribution to transport thought."