The strength of the expert Conservative is that he is
always right. Had the Central Office existed in 153o (and I expect it did) it would have affirmed that the sun went round the earth, and that Copernicus and Galileo were irrespon- sible and ignorant hotheads; and withal unpatriotic, effeminate, highbrow and blinded by the scientific point of view. Galileo's recantation would have been printed on the chief page of The Times newspaper, accompanied by a leading article in which triumph and forgivingness would have been inextricably combined. His eppur muove would have appeared, three days later, in a short paragraph in- serted below the auctioneers' announcements. And when, with the passage of generations, it became impossible any longer to defend the Ptolomaic system, Central Office would have assured its flock that Palace Chambers had been right all along and that the scientists had been wrong ; what had happened was that after the deaths of Copernicus and Galileo, the sun had suddenly got bored with going round and round and had insisted that it was time for the lesser members of the solar system to take a turn.
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