A few weeks ago the Pelman Institute was a name to me and nothing more.  The advertisement in the daily Press caught my eye and I glanced at them casually, but there were certain portions of the advertisements which leapt to the eye and for a moment concentrated my attention.

I gathered that I was reading the advertisement of a commercial enterprise, that it was the Pelman Institute, and that it was carried on at No. 4, Bloomsbury Street, but the chief impression made upon me was that the gentleman who was beating the drum outside the show was doing his particular part of the performance exceedingly well.

I have no prejudice against drum beating in the way of business.  The late General Booth once said to me when we were discussing his methods recruiting for the Salvation Army that if you want to attract the attention of the careless and the indifferent “you’ve got to bang the drum, and you’ve got to bang it loud.”

I have said that at the time when I knew the Pelman Institute only from its advertisements I looked upon it  as an exceedingly well advertised commercial undertaking.  Today, having had an opportunity of studying the Pelman Institute in all its details, of familiarizing myself with the whole machinery of the System, and gathering from indisputable testimony the value of the results, I regard the Institute hidden away in a side street of Bloomsbury as a great National asset.

The things seen and the things heard during my exploration of what was to me when I crossed its threshold an unknown world left me in the position of a traveler whose footprints have been guided to the Promised Land and who owes it to his fellow citizens that he should let them know that a land flowing with the milk and honey of mental efficiency lies within their easy reach.

And there is one thought that comes to me with overwhelming force.  I think back to the early days of the war, when throughout the length and breadth of the land there rang the Great Appeal.  It was Mother England’s heart-cry in her honor of peril; it was her cry to her young sons and her brave sons to enlist in the great Army of Freedom, to join the colours of the King and be trained for a field of battle where the fate and the future of the Empire were at stake.  I remember the song that was on every lip:—

“Your King and Country need you.”

In those days of hasty and excited preparation to meet a National peril which had come upon us with the swiftness and fury of a tornado, days which already seem far away, the walls of our cities blazed with appeals to the patriotism of the people.  England needed the services of every-able bodied man to save her from losing her supremacy as a world power.  The cry of the mother was answered swiftly by her sons.  Then came the time of the great National appeal to womanhood, and the daughters of England answered it as nobly as her sons had done.

But for the patriotism and devotion and sacrifice of the Empire’s sons and daughters there would have been in the pages of the world’s history to-day the record of the dark hour in which the star of our glory set.

How great, how terrible our need was in those dark days we do not know yet.  It may be that we shall not be told.  In the triumph of the future there may be an amiable conspiracy of silence as to the peril of the past.

But one of the greatest perils in our hours of bitter need was that we were unprepared for the conflict, both in material and in men.  Every able-bodied man in England worthy of the name of man was willing and eager to fight for his King, his Country, and his Home.  But the great mass of the able-bodied male population was untrained not only in the arts of war, but in the simple exercises of war.

Every man was needed at the front, but tens of thousands of brave men willing and eager to strike a blow for freedom had to be kept at home many long months to undergo the physical and military training necessary to make them efficient.  To have sent an army of inefficient men to face the efficient millions of the greatest military power in the world would have been sheer madness.

But among the men who at first came forward of their own free will, and among the men who were called up later on by the Royal Proclamation which announced that Conscription had become necessary for the defence of the Realm, there were thousands who had to be rejected for military service because they suffered from disabilities which rendered it unlikely that any amount of training would make them efficient soldiers.

It will be a struggle of intellectual might against intellectual might, of mental force against mental force.  It will be a mighty conflict of mind against mind and brain against brain, of mental efficiency against mental efficiency.

It is for that great War of Brains that our men and women, if they are true patriots, and if they love their land and their hearts’ desire is that it shall have a great and glorious future, must prepare themselves.  It is for that war they must train themselves.

In the great war of Peace there will be no flaming posters on the walls of our cities calling upon England’s sons to enlist; there will be no impassioned appeals to our men and our women to give themselves to the service of the Motherland.  There will be no songs to stir their hearts to sacrifice and brave endeavour.  But in the great war of Peace the song to sing itself in the heart of every man and woman shall be:—

“Your King and Country need you still.”

And your King and Country need you with all your faculties developed to the point of efficiency.  In all that concerns your own future, the future of your Country and the future of your Race, Efficiency will be the determining factor.

Never again must we muddle through in our National undertakings or our individual undertakings.  It is our duty to our country and to ourselves to become trained members and efficient members of the great army of citizens in whose hands are the destinies of our Empire and our Race.

• We must recognize the fact that it is mental efficiency which will henceforth be the governing power of the world, and it can only be developed by the assiduous practice of scientific principles.
• We must develop our minds as we develop our bodies.
• We must exercise our brains as we exercise our limbs.
• We must by a proper and scientific course of training attain that condition of mental fitness which will enable us to get the fullest value of all our faculties.
• It is only by attaining efficiency that we can hope to complete successfully in the great struggle which is ever becoming more strenuous and more exhausting.
• It is in this condition alone that we shall get the full value out of the years that may be vouch-safed to us.
• It is in this condition alone that we shall be able to employ our energies so that every unit contributes to our success in life and to our happiness in life.

The Pelman System is only another name for that scientific training of mind and memory, the result of which is mental efficiency.  The Directorate contends that those who embody the Pelman principles in their lives during the three hundred and sixty-five days of each year, instead of being enthusiastic one week and disappointed the next, are assured of the progressive development of their mental powers and of a fullness of life to which the untrained man is a stranger.

That this contention is borne out by results is proved up to the hilt by the enthusiastic letters of thousands of students, men and women of all classes and conditions, who have borne witness with one idea and one idea only, namely, to help forward and to popularize a movement which they believe to be of the greatest possible value to the British nation and to the British people, not only at the present time, but in the mighty future now dawning over the world.