SparkNotes

Act III

Next day after lunch Lady Britomart is writing in the library in

Wilton Crescent. Sarah is reading in the armchair near the

window. Barbara, in ordinary dresss, pale and brooding, is on the

settee. Charley Lomax enters. Coming forward between the settee

and the writing table, he starts on seeing Barbara fashionably

attired and in low spirits.

LOMAX. You've left off your uniform!

Barbara says nothing; but an expression of pain passes over

her face.

LADY BRITOMART [warning him in low tones to be careful] Charles!

LOMAX [much concerned, sitting down sympathetically on the settee

beside Barbara] I'm awfully sorry, Barbara. You know I helped you

all I could with the concertina and so forth. [Momentously]

Still, I have never shut my eyes to the fact that there is a

certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army. Now the claims

of the Church of England—

LADY BRITOMART. That's enough, Charles. Speak of something suited

to your mental capacity.

LOMAX. But surely the Church of England is suited to all our

capacities.

BARBARA [pressing his hand] Thank you for your sympathy, Cholly.

Now go and spoon with Sarah.

LOMAX [rising and going to Sarah] How is my ownest today?

SARAH. I wish you wouldn't tell Cholly to do things, Barbara. He

always comes straight and does them. Cholly: we're going to the

works at Perivale St. Andrews this afternoon.

LOMAX. What works?

SARAH. The cannon works.

LOMAX. What! Your governor's shop!

SARAH. Yes.

LOMAX. Oh I say!

Cusins enters in poor condition. He also starts visibly when he

sees Barbara without her uniform.

BARBARA. I expected you this morning, Dolly. Didn't you guess

that?

CUSINS [sitting down beside her] I'm sorry. I have only just

breakfasted.

SARAH. But we've just finished lunch.

BARBARA. Have you had one of your bad nights?

CUSINS. No: I had rather a good night: in fact, one of the most

remarkable nights I have ever passed.

BARBARA. The meeting?

CUSINS. No: after the meeting.

LADY BRITOMART. You should have gone to bed after the meeting.

What were you doing?

CUSINS. Drinking.

LADY BRITOMART. {Adolphus!

SARAH. {Dolly!

BARBARA. {Dolly!

LOMAX. {Oh I say!

LADY BRITOMART. What were you drinking, may I ask?

CUSINS. A most devilish kind of Spanish burgundy, warranted free

from added alcohol: a Temperance burgundy in fact. Its richness

in natural alcohol made any addition superfluous.

BARBARA. Are you joking, Dolly?

CUSINS [patiently] No. I have been making a night of it with the

nominal head of this household: that is all.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew made you drunk!

CUSINS. No: he only provided the wine. I think it was Dionysos

who made me drunk. [To Barbara] I told you I was possessed.

LADY BRITOMART. Your'e not sober yet. Go home to bed at once.

CUSINS. I have never before ventured to reproach you, Lady Brit;

but how could you marry the Prince of Darkness?

LADY BRITOMART. It was much more excusable to marry him than to

get drunk with him. That is a new accomplishment of Andrew's, by

the way. He usen't to drink.

CUSINS. He doesn't now. He only sat there and completed the wreck

of my moral basis, the rout of my convictions, the purchase of my

soul. He cares for you, Barbara. That is what makes him so

dangerous to me.

BARBARA. That has nothing to do with it, Dolly. There are larger

loves and diviner dreams than the fireside ones. You know that,

don't you?

CUSINS. Yes: that is our understanding. I know it. I hold to it.

Unless he can win me on that holier ground he may amuse me for a

while; but he can get no deeper hold, strong as he is.

BARBARA. Keep to that; and the end will be right. Now tell me

what happened at the meeting?

CUSINS. It was an amazing meeting. Mrs Baines almost died of

emotion. Jenny Hill went stark mad with hysteria. The Prince of

Darkness played his trombone like a madman: its brazen roarings

were like the laughter of the damned. 117 conversions took place

then and there. They prayed with the most touching sincerity and

gratitude for Bodger, and for the anonymous donor of the 5000

pounds. Your father would not let his name be given.

LOMAX. That was rather fine of the old man, you know. Most chaps

would have wanted the advertisement.

CUSINS. He said all the charitable institutions would be down on

him like kites on a battle field if he gave his name.

LADY BRITOMART. That's Andrew all over. He never does a proper

thing without giving an improper reason for it.

CUSINS. He convinced me that I have all my life been doing

improper things for proper reasons.

LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus: now that Barbara has left the Salvation

Army, you had better leave it too. I will not have you playing

that drum in the streets.

CUSINS. Your orders are already obeyed, Lady Brit.

BARBARA. Dolly: were you ever really in earnest about it? Would

you have joined if you had never seen me?

CUSINS [disingenuously] Well—er—well, possibly, as a collector

of religions—

LOMAX [cunningly] Not as a drummer, though, you know. You are a

very clearheaded brainy chap, Cholly; and it must have been

apparent to you that there is a certain amount of tosh about—

LADY BRITOMART. Charles: if you must drivel, drivel like a

grown-up man and not like a schoolboy.

LOMAX [out of countenance] Well, drivel is drivel, don't you

know, whatever a man's age.

LADY BRITOMART. In good society in England, Charles, men drivel

at all ages by repeating silly formulas with an air of wisdom.

Schoolboys make their own formulas out of slang, like you. When

they reach your age, and get political private secretaryships and

things of that sort, they drop slang and get their formulas out

of The Spectator or The Times. You had better confine yourself to

The Times. You will find that there is a certain amount of tosh

about The Times; but at least its language is reputable.

LOMAX [overwhelmed] You are so awfully strong-minded, Lady Brit—

LADY BRITOMART. Rubbish! [Morrison comes in]. What is it?

MORRISON. If you please, my lady, Mr Undershaft has just drove up

to the door.

LADY BRITOMART. Well, let him in. [Morrison hesitates]. What's

the matter with you?

MORRISON. Shall I announce him, my lady; or is he at home here,

so to speak, my lady?

LADY BRITOMART. Announce him.

MORRISON. Thank you, my lady. You won't mind my asking, I hope.

The occasion is in a manner of speaking new to me.

LADY BRITOMART. Quite right. Go and let him in.

MORRISON. Thank you, my lady. [He withdraws].

LADY BRITOMART. Children: go and get ready. [Sarah and Barbara go

upstairs for their out-of-door wrap]]. Charles: go and tell

Stephen to come down here in five minutes: you will find him in

the drawing room. [Charles goes]. Adolphus: tell them to send

round the carriage in about fifteen minutes. [Adolphus goes].

MORRISON [at the door] Mr Undershaft.

Undershaft comes in. Morrison goes out.

UNDERSHAFT. Alone! How fortunate!

LADY BRITOMART [rising] Don't be sentimental, Andrew. Sit down.

[She sits on the settee: he sits beside her, on her left. She

comes to the point before he has time to breathe]. Sarah must

have 800 pounds a year until Charles Lomax comes into his

property. Barbara will need more, and need it permanently,

because Adolphus hasn't any property.

UNDERSAAFT [resignedly] Yes, my dear: I will see to it. Anything

else? for yourself, for instance?

LADY BRITOMART. I want to talk to you about Stephen.

UNDERSHAFT [rather wearily] Don't, my dear. Stephen doesn't

interest me.

LADY BRITOMART. He does interest me. He is our son.

UNDERSHAFT. Do you really think so? He has induced us to bring

him into the world; but he chose his parents very incongruously,

I think. I see nothing of myself in him, and less of you.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: Stephen is an excellent son, and a most

steady, capable, highminded young man. YOU are simply trying to

find an excuse for disinheriting him.

UNDERSHAFT. My dear Biddy: the Undershaft tradition disinherits

him. It would be dishonest of me to leave the cannon foundry to

my son.

LADY BRITOMART. It would be most unnatural and improper of you to

leave it to anyone else, Andrew. Do you suppose this wicked and

immoral tradition can be kept up for ever? Do you pretend that

Stephen could not carry on the foundry just as well as all the

other sons of the big business houses?

UNDERSHAFT. Yes: he could learn the office routine without

understanding the business, like all the other sons; and the firm

would go on by its own momentum until the real Undershaft—

probably an Italian or a German—would invent a new method and

cut him out.

LADY BRITOMART. There is nothing that any Italian or German could

do that Stephen could not do. And Stephen at least has breeding.

UNDERSHAFT. The son of a foundling! nonsense!

LADY BRITOMART. My son, Andrew! And even you may have good blood

in your veins for all you know.

UNDERSHAFT. True. Probably I have. That is another argument in

favor of a foundling.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: don't be aggravating. And don't be

wicked. At present you are both.

UNDERSHAFT. This conversation is part of the Undershaft

tradition, Biddy. Every Undershaft's wife has treated him to it

ever since the house was founded. It is mere waste of breath. If

the tradition be ever broken it will be for an abler man than

Stephen.

LADY BRITOMART [pouting] Then go away.

UNDERSHAFT [deprecatory] Go away!

LADY BRITOMART. Yes: go away. If you will do nothing for Stephen,

you are not wanted here. Go to your foundling, whoever he is; and

look after him.

UNDERSHAFT. The fact is, Biddy—

LADY BRITOMART. Don't call me Biddy. I don't call you Andy.

UNDERSHAFT. I will not call my wife Britomart: it is not good

sense. Seriously, my love, the Undershaft tradition has landed me

in a difficulty. I am getting on in years; and my partner Lazarus

has at last made a stand and insisted that the succession must be

settled one way or the other; and of course he is quite right.

You see, I haven't found a fit successor yet.

LADY BRITOMART [obstinately] There is Stephen.

UNDERSHAFT. That's just it: all the foundlings I can find are

exactly like Stephen.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew!!

UNDERSHAFT. I want a man with no relations and no schooling: that

is, a man who would be out of the running altogether if he were

not a strong man. And I can't find him. Every blessed foundling

nowadays is snapped up in his infancy by Barnardo homes, or

School Board officers, or Boards of Guardians; and if he shows

the least ability, he is fastened on by schoolmasters; trained to

win scholarships like a racehorse; crammed with secondhand ideas;

drilled and disciplined in docility and what they call good

taste; and lamed for life so that he is fit for nothing but

teaching. If you want to keep the foundry in the family, you had

better find an eligible foundling and marry him to Barbara.

LADY BRITOMART. Ah! Barbara! Your pet! You would sacrifice

Stephen to Barbara.

UNDERSHAFT. Cheerfully. And you, my dear, would boil Barbara to

make soup for Stephen.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: this is not a question of our likings and

dislikings: it is a question of duty. It is your duty to make

Stephen your successor.

UNDERSHAFT. Just as much as it is your duty to submit to your

husband. Come, Biddy! these tricks of the governing class are of

no use with me. I am one of the governing class myself; and it is

waste of time giving tracts to a missionary. I have the power in

this matter; and I am not to be humbugged into using it for your

purposes.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: you can talk my head off; but you can't

change wrong into right. And your tie is all on one side. Put it

straight.

UNDERSHAFT [disconcerted] It won't stay unless it's pinned [he

fumbles at it with childish grimaces]—

Stephen comes in.

STEPHEN [at the door] I beg your pardon [about to retire].

LADY BRITOMART. No: come in, Stephen. [Stephen comes forward to

his mother's writing table.

UNDERSHAFT [not very cordially] Good afternoon.

STEPHEN [coldly] Good afternoon.

UNDERSHAFT [to Lady Britomart] He knows all about the tradition,

I suppose?

LADY BRITOMART. Yes. [To Stephen] It is what I told you last

night, Stephen.

UNDERSHAFT [sulkily] I understand you want to come into the

cannon business.

STEPHEN. _I_ go into trade! Certainly not.

UNDERSHAFT [opening his eyes, greatly eased in mind and manner]

Oh! in that case—!

LADY BRITOMART. Cannons are not trade, Stephen. They are

enterprise.

STEPHEN. I have no intention of becoming a man of business in any

sense. I have no capacity for business and no taste for it. I

intend to devote myself to politics.

UNDERSHAFT [rising] My dear boy: this is an immense relief to me.

And I trust it may prove an equally good thing for the country. I

was afraid you would consider yourself disparaged and slighted.

[He moves towards Stephen as if to shake hands with him].

LADY BRITOMART [rising and interposing] Stephen: I cannot allow

you to throw away an enormous property like this.

STEPHEN [stiffly] Mother: there must be an end of treating me as

a child, if you please. [Lady Britomart recoils, deeply wounded

by his tone]. Until last night I did not take your attitude

seriously, because I did not think you meant it seriously. But I

find now that you left me in the dark as to matters which you

should have explained to me years ago. I am extremely hurt and

offended. Any further discussion of my intentions had better take

place with my father, as between one man and another.

LADY BRITOMART. Stephen! [She sits down again; and her eyes fill

with tears].

UNDERSHAFT [with grave compassion] You see, my dear, it is only

the big men who can be treated as children.

STEPHEN. I am sorry, mother, that you have forced me—

UNDERSHAFT [stopping him] Yes, yes, yes, yes: that's all right,

Stephen. She wont interfere with you any more: your independence

is achieved: you have won your latchkey. Don't rub it in; and

above all, don't apologize. [He resumes his seat]. Now what about

your future, as between one man and another—I beg your pardon,

Biddy: as between two men and a woman.

LADY BRITOMART [who has pulled herself together strongly] I quite

understand, Stephen. By all means go your own way if you feel

strong enough. [Stephen sits down magisterially in the chair at

the writing table with an air of affirming his majority].

UNDERSHAFT. It is settled that you do not ask for the succession

to the cannon business.

STEPHEN. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the cannon

business.

UNDERSHAFT. Come, come! Don't be so devilishly sulky: it's

boyish. Freedom should be generous. Besides, I owe you a fair

start in life in exchange for disinheriting you. You can't become

prime minister all at once. Haven't you a turn for something?

What about literature, art and so forth?

STEPHEN. I have nothing of the artist about me, either in faculty

or character, thank Heaven!

UNDERSHAFT. A philosopher, perhaps? Eh?

STEPHEN. I make no such ridiculous pretension.

UNDERSHAFT. Just so. Well, there is the army, the navy, the

Church, the Bar. The Bar requires some ability. What

about the Bar?

STEPHEN. I have not studied law. And I am afraid I have not the

necessary push—I believe that is the name barristers give to

their vulgarity—for success in pleading.

UNDERSHAFT. Rather a difficult case, Stephen. Hardly anything

left but the stage, is there? [Stephen makes an impatient

movement]. Well, come! is there anything you know or care for?

STEPHEN [rising and looking at him steadily] I know the

difference between right and wrong.

UNDERSHAFT [hugely tickled] You don't say so! What! no capacity

for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no

pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret

that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers,

muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists:

the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, master

of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

STEPHEN [keeping his temper with difficulty] You are pleased to

be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable

English gentleman claims as his birthright [he sits down

angrily].

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, that's everybody's birthright. Look at poor

little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were

laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and

teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawingroom

dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach

morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people.

You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is

a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the

bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle

high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and

truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another

at that game. What a country! what a world!

LADY HRITOMART [uneasily] What do you think he had better do,

Andrew?

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and

he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political

career. Get him a private secretaryship to someone who can get

him an Under Secretaryship; and then leave him alone. He will

find his natural and proper place in the end on the Treasury

bench.

STEPHEN [springing up again] I am sorry, sir, that you force

me to forget the respect due to you as my father. I am an

Englishman; and I will not hear the Government of my country

insulted. [He thrusts his hands in his pockets, and walks angrily

across to the window].

UNDERSHAFT [with a touch of brutality] The government of your

country! _I_ am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus.

Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you,

sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern

Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US.

You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it

doesn't. You will find out that trade requires certain measures

when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to

keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a

national need. When other people want something to keep my

dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in

return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers,

and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman.

Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play

with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and

great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys.

_I_ am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call

the tune.

STEPHEN [actually smiling, and putting his hand on his father's

shoulder with indulgent patronage] Really, my dear father, it is

impossible to be angry with you. You don't know how absurd all

this sounds to ME. You are very properly proud of having been

industrious enough to make money; and it is greatly to your

credit that you have made so much of it. But it has kept you in

circles where you are valued for your money and deferred to for

it, instead of in the doubtless very oldfashioned and

behind-the-times public school and university where I formed my

habits of mind. It is natural for you to think that money governs

England; but you must allow me to think I know better.

UNDERSHAFT. And what does govern England, pray?

STEPHEN. Character, father, character.

UNDERSHAFT. Whose character? Yours or mine?

STEPHEN. Neither yours nor mine, father, but the best elements in

the English national character.

UNDERSHAFT. Stephen: I've found your profession for you. You're a

born journalist. I'll start you with a hightoned weekly review.

There!

Stephen goes to the smaller writing table and busies himself with

his letters.

Sarah, Barbara, Lomax, and Cusins come in ready for walking.

Barbara crosses the room to the window and looks out. Cusins

drifts amiably to the armchair, and Lomax remains near the door,

whilst Sarah comes to her mother.

SARAH. Go and get ready, mamma: the carriage is waiting. [Lady

Britomart leaves the room.

UNDERSHAFT [to Sarah] Good day, my dear. Good afternoon, Mr.

Lomax.

LOMAX [vaguely] Ahdedoo.

UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins] quite well after last night, Euripides,

eh?

CUSINS. As well as can be expected.

UNDERSHAFT. That's right. [To Barbara] So you are coming to see

my death and devastation factory, Barbara?

BARBARA [at the window] You came yesterday to see my salvation

factory. I promised you a return visit.

LOMAX [coming forward between Sarah and Undershaft] You'll find

it awfully interesting. I've been through the Woolwich Arsenal;

and it gives you a ripping feeling of security, you know, to

think of the lot of beggars we could kill if it came to fighting.

[To Undershaft, with sudden solemnity] Still, it must be rather

an awful reflection for you, from the religious point of view as

it were. You're getting on, you know, and all that.

SARAH. You don't mind Cholly's imbecility, papa, do you?

LOMAX [much taken aback] Oh I say!

UNDERSHAFT. Mr Lomax looks at the matter in a very proper spirit,

my dear.

LOMAX. Just so. That's all I meant, I assure you.

SARAH. Are you coming, Stephen?

STEPHEN. Well, I am rather busy—er—[Magnanimously] Oh well,

yes: I'll come. That is, if there is room for me.

UNDERSHAFT. I can take two with me in a little motor I am

experimenting with for field use. You won't mind its being rather

unfashionable. It's not painted yet; but it's bullet proof.

LOMAX [appalled at the prospect of confronting Wilton Crescent in

an unpainted motor] Oh I say!

SARAH. The carriage for me, thank you. Barbara doesn't mind what

she's seen in.

LOMAX. I say, Dolly old chap: do you really mind the car being a

guy? Because of course if you do I'll go in it. Still—

CUSINS. I prefer it.

LOMAX. Thanks awfully, old man. Come, Sarah. [He hurries out to

secure his seat in the carriage. Sarah follows him].

CUSINS. [moodily walking across to Lady Britomart's writing table

Why are we two coming to this Works Department of Hell? that is

what I ask myself.

BARBARA. I have always thought of it as a sort of pit where lost

creatures with blackened faces stirred up smoky fires and were

driven and tormented by my father? Is it like that, dad?

UNDERSHAFT [scandalized] My dear! It is a spotlessly clean and

beautiful hillside town.

CUSINS. With a Methodist chapel? Oh do say there's a Methodist

chapel.

UNDERSHAFT. There are two: a primitive one and a sophisticated

one. There is even an Ethical Society; but it is not much

patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the High

Explosives Sheds they object to the presence of Agnostics as

unsafe.

CUSINS. And yet they don't object to you!

BARBARA. Do they obey all your orders?

UNDERSHAFT. I never give them any orders. When I speak to one of

them it is "Well, Jones, is the baby doing well? and has Mrs

Jones made a good recovery?" "Nicely, thank you, sir." And that's

all.

CUSINS. But Jones has to be kept in order. How do you maintain

discipline among your men?

UNDERSHAFT. I don't. They do. You see, the one thing Jones won't

stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion

of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a

week less than himself and Mrs Jones! Of course they all rebel

against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps

the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I

never bully them. I don't even bully Lazarus. I say that certain

things are to be done; but I don't order anybody to do them. I

don't say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing

and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about;

the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled

laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and

artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen;

the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental

managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and

hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on

equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which

comes to me.

CUSINS [revolted] You really are a—well, what I was saying

yesterday.

BARBARA. What was he saying yesterday?

UNDERSHAFT. Never mind, my dear. He thinks I have made you

unhappy. Have I?

BARBARA. Do you think I can be happy in this vulgar silly dress?

I! who have worn the uniform. Do you understand what you have

done to me? Yesterday I had a man's soul in my hand. I set him in

the way of life with his face to salvation. But when we took your

money he turned back to drunkenness and derision. [With intense

conviction] I will never forgive you that. If I had a child, and

you destroyed its body with your explosives—if you murdered

Dolly with your horrible guns—I could forgive you if my

forgiveness would open the gates of heaven to you. But to take a

human soul from me, and turn it into the soul of a wolf! that is

worse than any murder.

UNDERSHAFT. Does my daughter despair so easily? Can you strike a

man to the heart and leave no mark on him?

BARBARA [her face lighting up] Oh, you are right: he can never be

lost now: where was my faith?

CUSINS. Oh, clever clever devil!

BARBARA. You may be a devil; but God speaks through you

sometimes. [She takes her father's hands and kisses them]. You

have given me back my happiness: I feel it deep down now, though

my spirit is troubled.

UNDERSHAFT. You have learnt something. That always feels at first

as if you had lost something.

BARBARA. Well, take me to the factory of death, and let me learn

something more. There must be some truth or other behind all this

frightful irony. Come, Dolly. [She goes out].

CUSINS. My guardian angel! [To Undershaft] Avaunt! [He follows

Barbara].

STEPHEN [quietly, at the writing table] You must not mind Cusins,

father. He is a very amiable good fellow; but he is a Greek

scholar and naturally a little eccentric.

UNDERSHAFT. Ah, quite so. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. [He goes

out].

Stephen smiles patronizingly; buttons his coat responsibly; and

crosses the room to the door. Lady Britomart, dressed for

out-of-doors, opens it before he reaches it. She looks round far

the others; looks at Stephen; and turns to go without a word.

STEPHEN [embarrassed] Mother—

LADY BRITOMART. Don't be apologetic, Stephen. And don't forget

that you have outgrown your mother. [She goes out].

Perivale St Andrews lies between two Middlesex hills, half

climbing the northern one. It is an almost smokeless town of

white walls, roofs of narrow green slates or red tiles, tall

trees, domes, campaniles, and slender chimney shafts, beautifully

situated and beautiful in itself. The best view of it is obtained

from the crest of a slope about half a mile to the east, where

the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in

the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge

skittles into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a

platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests a

fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete

Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon

is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original

model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun alluded to by

Stephen. The parapet has a high step inside which serves as a

seat.

Barbara is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On

her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on

piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which

opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold,

with a fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet

stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of

the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind

the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge conical bombshell, with a

red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same

side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like

the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction.

Cusins arrives by the path from the town.

BARBARA. Well?

CUSINS. Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real.

It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a

hellish one.

BARBARA. Have you found out whether they have done anything for

old Peter Shirley.

CUSINS. They have found him a job as gatekeeper and timekeeper.

He's frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork,

and says he isn't used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid

that he's ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery.

BARBARA. Poor Peter!

Stephen arrives from the town. He carries a fieldglass.

STEPHEN [enthusiastically] Have you two seen the place? Why did

you leave us?

CUSINS. I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and

Barbara wanted to make the men talk.

STEPHEN. Have you found anything discreditable?

CUSINS. No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a

cunning old rascal; but it's all horribly, frightfully,

immorally, unanswerably perfect.

Sarah arrives.

SARAH. Heavens! what a place! [She crosses to the trolley]. Did

you see the nursing home!? [She sits down on the shell].

STEPHEN. Did you see the libraries and schools!?

SARAH. Did you see the ballroom and the banqueting chamber in the

Town Hall!?

STEPHEN. Have you gone into the insurance fund, the pension fund,

the building society, the various applications of co-operation!?

Undershaft comes from the office, with a sheaf of telegrams in

his hands.

UNDERSHAFT. Well, have you seen everything? I'm sorry I was

called away. [Indicating the telegrams] News from Manchuria.

STEPHEN. Good news, I hope.

UNDERSHAFT. Very.

STEPHEN. Another Japanese victory?

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, I don't know. Which side wins does not concern us

here. No: the good news is that the aerial battleship is a

tremendous success. At the first trial it has wiped out a fort

with three hundred soldiers in it.

CUSINS [from the platform] Dummy soldiers?

UNDERSHAFT. No: the real thing. [Cusins and Barbara exchange

glances. Then Cusins sits on the step and buries his face in his

hands. Barbara gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he

looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation]. Well,

Stephen, what do you think of the place?

STEPHEN. Oh, magnificent. A perfect triumph of organization.

Frankly, my dear father, I have been a fool: I had no idea of

what it all meant—of the wonderful forethought, the power of

organization, the administrative capacity, the financial genius,

the colossal capital it represents. I have been repeating to

myself as I came through your streets "Peace hath her victories

no less renowned than War." I have only one misgiving about it

all.

UNDERSHAFT. Out with it.

STEPHEN. Well, I cannot help thinking that all this provision for

every want of your workmen may sap their independence and weaken

their sense of responsibility. And greatly as we enjoyed our tea

at that splendid restaurant—how they gave us all that luxury and

cake and jam and cream for threepence I really cannot imagine!—

still you must remember that restaurants break up home life. Look

at the continent, for instance! Are you sure so much pampering is

really good for the men's characters?

UNDERSHAFT. Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing

civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and

anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are,

then, I take it, you simply don't organize civilization; and

there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all

angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go

through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here.

A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that

we may be blown to smithereens at any moment.

SARAH. By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives?

UNDERSHAFT. In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of

them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite

close to it are killed.

Stephen, who is quite close to it, looks at it rather scaredly,

and moves away quickly to the cannon. At the same moment the door

of the shed is thrown abruptly open; and a foreman in overalls

and list slippers comes out on the little landing and holds the

door open for Lomax, who appears in the doorway.

LOMAX [with studied coolness] My good fellow: you needn't get

into a state of nerves. Nothing's going to happen to you; and I

suppose it wouldn't be the end of the world if anything did. A

little bit of British pluck is what you want, old chap. [He

descends and strolls across to Sarah].

UNDERSHAFT [to the foreman] Anything wrong, Bilton?

BILTON [with ironic calm] Gentleman walked into the high

explosives shed and lit a cigaret, sir: that's all.

UNDERSHAFT. Ah, quite so. [To Lomax] Do you happen to remember

what you did with the match?

LOMAX. Oh come! I'm not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it

out before I chucked it away.

BILTON. The top of it was red hot inside, sir.

LOMAX. Well, suppose it was! I didn't chuck it into any of your

messes.

UNDERSHAFT. Think no more of it, Mr Lomax. By the way, would you

mind lending me your matches?

LOMAX [offering his box] Certainly.

UNDERSHAFT. Thanks. [He pockets the matches].

LOMAX [lecturing to the company generally] You know, these high

explosives don't go off like gunpowder, except when they're in a

gun. When they're spread loose, you can put a match to them

without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of

paper. [Warming to the scientific interest of the subject] Did

you know that Undershaft? Have you ever tried?

UNDERSHAFT. Not on a large scale, Mr Lomax. Bilton will give you

a sample of gun cotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You

can experiment with it at home. [Bilton looks puzzled].

SARAH. Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it's

your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might

really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly. [Bilton gives it up

and retires into the shed].

LOMAX. My ownest, there is no danger. [He sits beside her on the

shell].

Lady Britomart arrives from the town with a bouquet.

LADY BRITOMART [coming impetuously between Undershaft and the

deck chair] Andrew: you shouldn't have let me see this place.

UNDERSHAFT. Why, my dear?

LADY BRITOMART. Never mind why: you shouldn't have: that's all.

To think of all that [indicating the town] being yours! and that

you have kept it to yourself all these years!

UNDERSHAFT. It does not belong to me. I belong to it. It is the

Undershaft inheritance.

LADY BRITOMART. It is not. Your ridiculous cannons and that noisy

banging foundry may be the Undershaft inheritance; but all that

plate and linen, all that furniture and those houses and orchards

and gardens belong to us. They belong to me: they are not a man's

business. I won't give them up. You must be out of your senses to

throw them all away; and if you persist in such folly, I will

call in a doctor.

UNDERSHAFT [stooping to smell the bouquet] Where did you get the

flowers, my dear?

LADY BRITOMART. Your men presented them to me in your William

Morris Labor Church.

CUSINS [springing up] Oh! It needed only that. A Labor Church!

LADY BRITOMART. Yes, with Morris's words in mosaic letters ten

feet high round the dome. NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH TO BE ANOTHER

MAN'S MASTER. The cynicism of it!

UNDERSHAFT. It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now

they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in

church.

LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: you are trying to put me off the subject

of the inheritance by profane jokes. Well, you shan't. I don't

ask it any longer for Stephen: he has inherited far too much of

your perversity to be fit for it. But Barbara has rights as well

as Stephen. Why should not Adolphus succeed to the inheritance? I

could manage the town for him; and he can look after the cannons,

if they are really necessary.

UNDERSHAFT. I should ask nothing better if Adolphus were a

foundling. He is exactly the sort of new blood that is wanted in

English business. But he's not a foundling; and there's an end of

it.

CUSINS [diplomatically] Not quite. [They all turn and stare at

him. He comes from the platform past the shed to Undershaft]. I

think—Mind! I am not committing myself in any way as to my

future course—but I think the foundling difficulty can be got

over.

UNDERSHAFT. What do you mean?

CUSINS. Well, I have something to say which is in the nature of a

confession.

SARAH. {

LADY BRITOMART. { Confession!

BARBARA. {

STEPHEN. {

LOMAX. Oh I say!

CUSINS. Yes, a confession. Listen, all. Until I met Barbara I

thought myself in the main an honorable, truthful man, because I

wanted the approval of my conscience more than I wanted anything

else. But the moment I saw Barbara, I wanted her far more than

the approval of my conscience.

LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!

CUSINS. It is true. You accused me yourself, Lady Brit, of

joining the Army to worship Barbara; and so I did. She bought my

soul like a flower at a street corner; but she bought it for

herself.

UNDERSHAFT. What! Not for Dionysos or another?

CUSINS. Dionysos and all the others are in herself. I adored what

was divine in her, and was therefore a true worshipper. But I was

romantic about her too. I thought she was a woman of the people,

and that a marriage with a professor of Greek would be far beyond

the wildest social ambitions of her rank.

LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!!

LOMAX. Oh I say!!!

CUSINS. When I learnt the horrible truth—

LADY BRITOMART. What do you mean by the horrible truth, pray?

CUSINS. That she was enormously rich; that her grandfather was an

earl; that her father was the Prince of Darkness—

UNDERSHAFT. Chut!

CUSINS.—and that I was only an adventurer trying to catch a rich

wife, then I stooped to deceive about my birth.

LADY BRITOMART. Your birth! Now Adolphus, don't dare to make up a

wicked story for the sake of these wretched cannons. Remember: I

have seen photographs of your parents; and the Agent General for

South Western Australia knows them personally and has assured me

that they are most respectable married people.

CUSINS. So they are in Australia; but here they are outcasts.

Their marriage is legal in Australia, but not in England. My

mother is my father's deceased wife's sister; and in this island

I am consequently a foundling. [Sensation]. Is the subterfuge

good enough, Machiavelli?

UNDERSHAFT [thoughtfully] Biddy: this may be a way out of the

difficulty.

LADY BRITOMART. Stuff! A man can't make cannons any the better

for being his own cousin instead of his proper self [she sits

down in the deck chair with a bounce that expresses her downright

contempt for their casuistry.

UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins] You are an educated man. That is against

the tradition.

CUSINS. Once in ten thousand times it happens that the schoolboy

is a born master of what they try to teach him. Greek has not

destroyed my mind: it has nourished it. Besides, I did not learn

it at an English public school.

UNDERSHAFT. Hm! Well, I cannot afford to be too particular: you

have cornered the foundling market. Let it pass. You are

eligible, Euripides: you are eligible.

BARBARA [coming from the platform and interposing between Cusins

and Undershaft] Dolly: yesterday morning, when Stephen told us

all about the tradition, you became very silent; and you have

been strange and excited ever since. Were you thinking of your

birth then?

CUSINS. When the finger of Destiny suddenly points at a man in

the middle of his breakfast, it makes him thoughtful. [Barbara

turns away sadly and stands near her mother, listening

perturbedly].

UNDERSHAFT. Aha! You have had your eye on the business, my young

friend, have you?

CUSINS. Take care! There is an abyss of moral horror between me

and your accursed aerial battleships.

UNDERSHAFT. Never mind the abyss for the present. Let us settle

the practical details and leave your final decision open. You

know that you will have to change your name. Do you object to

that?

CUSINS. Would any man named Adolphus—any man called Dolly!—

object to be called something else?

UNDERSHAFT. Good. Now, as to money! I propose to treat you

handsomely from the beginning. You shall start at a thousand a

year.

CUSINS. [with sudden heat, his spectacles twinkling with

mischief] A thousand! You dare offer a miserable thousand to

the son-in-law of a millionaire! No, by Heavens, Machiavelli! you

shall not cheat me. You cannot do without me; and I can do

without you. I must have two thousand five hundred a year for two

years. At the end of that time, if I am a failure, I go. But if I

am a success, and stay on, you must give me the other five

thousand.

UNDERSHAFT. What other five thousand?

CUSINS. To make the two years up to five thousand a year. The two

thousand five hundred is only half pay in case I should turn out

a failure. The third year I must have ten per cent on the

profits.

UNDERSHAFT [taken aback] Ten per cent! Why, man, do you know what

my profits are?

CUSINS. Enormous, I hope: otherwise I shall require twenty-five

per cent.

UNDERSHAFT. But, Mr Cusins, this is a serious matter of business.

You are not bringing any capital into the concern.

CUSINS. What! no capital! Is my mastery of Greek no capital? Is

my access to the subtlest thought, the loftiest poetry yet

attained by humanity, no capital? my character! my intellect! my

life! my career! what Barbara calls my soul! are these no

capital? Say another word; and I double my salary.

UNDERSHAFT. Be reasonable—

CUSINS [peremptorily] Mr Undershaft: you have my terms. Take them

or leave them.

UNDERSHAFT [recovering himself] Very well. I note your terms; and

I offer you half.

CUSINS [disgusted] Half!

UNDERSHAFT [firmly] Half.

CUSINS. You call yourself a gentleman; and you offer me half!!

UNDERSHAFT. I do not call myself a gentleman; but I offer you

half.

CUSINS. This to your future partner! your successor! your

son-in-law!

BARBARA. You are selling your own soul, Dolly, not mine. Leave me

out of the bargain, please.

UNDERSHAFT. Come! I will go a step further for Barbara's sake. I

will give you three fifths; but that is my last word.

CUSINS. Done!

LOMAX. Done in the eye. Why, _I_ only get eight hundred, you

know.

CUSINS. By the way, Mac, I am a classical scholar, not an

arithmetical one. Is three fifths more than half or less?

UNDERSHAFT. More, of course.

CUSINS. I would have taken two hundred and fifty. How you can

succeed in business when you are willing to pay all that money to

a University don who is obviously not worth a junior clerk's

wages!—well! What will Lazarus say?

UNDERSHAFT. Lazarus is a gentle romantic Jew who cares for

nothing but string quartets and stalls at fashionable theatres.

He will get the credit of your rapacity in money matters, as he

has hitherto had the credit of mine. You are a shark of the first

order, Euripides. So much the better for the firm!

BARBARA. Is the bargain closed, Dolly? Does your soul belong to

him now?

CUSINS. No: the price is settled: that is all. The real tug of

war is still to come. What about the moral question?

LADY BRITOMART. There is no moral question in the matter at all,

Adolphus. You must simply sell cannons and weapons to people

whose cause is right and just, and refuse them to foreigners and

criminals.

UNDERSHAFT [determinedly] No: none of that. You must keep the

true faith of an Armorer, or you don't come in here.

CUSINS. What on earth is the true faith of an Armorer?

UNDERSHAFT. To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for

them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and

republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to

Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man

white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all

nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all

crimes. The first Undershaft wrote up in his shop IF GOD GAVE THE

HAND, LET NOT MAN WITHHOLD THE SWORD. The second wrote up ALL

HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIGHT: NONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE. The third

wrote up TO MAN THE WEAPON: TO HEAVEN THE VICTORY. The fourth had

no literary turn; so he did not write up anything; but he sold

cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third. The fifth

wrote up PEACE SHALL NOT PREVAIL SAVE WITH A SWORD IN HER HAND.

The sixth, my master, was the best of all. He wrote up NOTHING IS

EVER DONE IN THIS WORLD UNTIL MEN ARE PREPARED TO KILL ONE

ANOTHER IF IT IS NOT DONE. After that, there was nothing left for

the seventh to say. So he wrote up, simply, UNASHAMED.

CUSINS. My good Machiavelli, I shall certainly write something up

on the wall; only, as I shall write it in Greek, you won't be

able to read it. But as to your Armorer's faith, if I take my

neck out of the noose of my own morality I am not going to put it

into the noose of yours. I shall sell cannons to whom I please

and refuse them to whom I please. So there!

UNDERSHAFT. From the moment when you become Andrew Undershaft,

you will never do as you please again. Don't come here lusting

for power, young man.

CUSINS. If power were my aim I should not come here for it. YOU

have no power.

UNDERSHAFT. None of my own, certainly.

CUSINS. I have more power than you, more will. You do not drive

this place: it drives you. And what drives the place?

UNDERSHAFT [enigmatically] A will of which I am a part.

BARBARA [startled] Father! Do you know what you are saying; or

are you laying a snare for my soul?

CUSINS. Don't listen to his metaphysics, Barbara. The place is

driven by the most rascally part of society, the money hunters,

the pleasure hunters, the military promotion hunters; and he is

their slave.

UNDERSHAFT. Not necessarily. Remember the Armorer's Faith. I will

take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If

you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my

weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make

cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction. Bah! You tire me,

Euripides, with your morality mongering. Ask Barbara: SHE

understands. [He suddenly takes Barbara's hands, and looks

powerfully into her eyes]. Tell him, my love, what power really

means.

BARBARA [hypnotized] Before I joined the Salvation Army, I was in

my own power; and the consequence was that I never knew what to

do with myself. When I joined it, I had not time enough for all

the things I had to do.

UNDERSHAFT [approvingly] Just so. And why was that, do you

suppose?

BARBARA. Yesterday I should have said, because I was in the power

of God. [She resumes her self-possession, withdrawing her hands

from his with a power equal to his own]. But you came and showed

me that I was in the power of Bodger and Undershaft. Today I

feel—oh! how can I put it into words? Sarah: do you remember the

earthquake at Cannes, when we were little children?—how little

the surprise of the first shock mattered compared to the dread

and horror of waiting for the second? That is how I feel in this

place today. I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without

a word of warning it reeled and crumbled under me. I was safe

with an infinite wisdom watching me, an army marching to

Salvation with me; and in a moment, at a stroke of your pen in a

cheque book, I stood alone; and the heavens were empty. That was

the first shock of the earthquake: I am waiting for the second.

UNDERSHAFT. Come, come, my daughter! Don't make too much of your

little tinpot tragedy. What do we do here when we spend years of

work and thought and thousands of pounds of solid cash on a new

gun or an aerial battleship that turns out just a hairsbreadth

wrong after all? Scrap it. Scrap it without wasting another hour

or another pound on it. Well, you have made for yourself

something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It

doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that

does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It

scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap

its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions

and its old political constitutions. What's the result? In

machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and

politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy

every year. Don't persist in that folly. If your old religion

broke down yesterday, get a newer and a better one for tomorrow.

BARBARA. Oh how gladly I would take a better one to my soul! But

you offer me a worse one. [Turning on him with sudden vehemence].

Justify yourself: show me some light through the darkness of this

dreadful place, with its beautifully clean workshops, and

respectable workmen, and model homes.

UNDERSHAFT. Cleanliness and respectability do not need

justification, Barbara: they justify themselves. I see no

darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw

poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle

and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to

twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look

after the drainage.

BARBARA. And their souls?

UNDERSHAFT. I save their souls just as I saved yours.

BARBARA [revolted] You saved my soul! What do you mean?

UNDERSHAFT. I fed you and clothed you and housed you. I took care

that you should have money enough to live handsomely—more than

enough; so that you could be wasteful, careless, generous. That

saved your soul from the seven deadly sins.

BARBARA [bewildered] The seven deadly sins!

UNDERSHAFT. Yes, the deadly seven. [Counting on his fingers]

Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children.

Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but

money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are

lifted. I lifted them from your spirit. I enabled Barbara to

become Major Barbara; and I saved her from the crime of poverty.

CUSINS. Do you call poverty a crime?

UNDERSHAFT. The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues

beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by

comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible

pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within

sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a

murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what

do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of

life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in

London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people,

dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally

and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us

to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural

cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down

into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.

Pah! [turning on Barbara] you talk of your half-saved ruffian in

West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition.

Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again

to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by

thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome

street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy

waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting;

before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at

a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.

BARBARA. And will he be the better for that?

UNDERSHAFT. You know he will. Don't be a hypocrite, Barbara. He

will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better

behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That

will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter,

chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to

kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it: knee drill,

I think you call it. It is cheap work converting starving men

with a Bible in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. I

will undertake to convert West Ham to Mahometanism on the same

terms. Try your hand on my men: their souls are hungry because

their bodies are full.

BARBARA. And leave the east end to starve?

UNDERSHAFT [his energetic tone dropping into one of bitter and

brooding remembrance] I was an east ender. I moralized and

starved until one day I swore that I would be a fullfed free man

at all costs—that nothing should stop me except a bullet,

neither reason nor morals nor the lives of other men. I said

"Thou shalt starve ere I starve"; and with that word I became

free and great. I was a dangerous man until I had my will: now I

am a useful, beneficent, kindly person. That is the history of

most self-made millionaires, I fancy. When it is the history of

every Englishman we shall have an England worth living in.

LADY BRITOMART. Stop making speeches, Andrew. This is not the

place for them.

UNDERSHAFT [punctured] My dear: I have no other means of

conveying my ideas.

LADY BRITOMART. Your ideas are nonsense. You got oil because you

were selfish and unscrupulous.

UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. I had the strongest scruples about

poverty and starvation. Your moralists are quite unscrupulous

about both: they make virtues of them. I had rather be a thief

than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave. I don't

want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then,

by Heaven, I'll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate

poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever. And

let me tell you this. Poverty and slavery have stood up for

centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not

stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them: don't reason

with them. Kill them.

BARBARA. Killing. Is that your remedy for everything?

UNDERSHAFT. It is the final test of conviction, the only lever

strong enough to overturn a social system, the only way of saying

Must. Let six hundred and seventy fools loose in the street; and

three policemen can scatter them. But huddle them together in a

certain house in Westminster; and let them go through certain

ceremonies and call themselves certain names until at last they

get the courage to kill; and your six hundred and seventy fools

become a government. Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and

imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that

really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it.

CUSINS. That is perhaps why, like most intelligent people, I

never vote.

UNDERSHAFT Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the names of

the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments,

inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new. Is that

historically true, Mr Learned Man, or is it not?

CUSINS. It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I

repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in

every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be

true.

UNDERSHAFT. Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to

spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists?

Turn your oughts into shalls, man. Come and make explosives with

me. Whatever can blow men up can blow society up. The history of

the world is the history of those who had courage enough to

embrace this truth. Have you the courage to embrace it, Barbara?

LADY BRITOMART. Barbara, I positively forbid you to listen to

your father's abominable wickedness. And you, Adolphus, ought to

know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true.

What does it matter whether they are true if they are wrong?

UNDERSHAFT. What does it matter whether they are wrong if they

are true?

LADY BRITOMART [rising] Children: come home instantly. Andrew: I

am exceedingly sorry I allowed you to call on us. You are

wickeder than ever. Come at once.

BARBARA [shaking her head] It's no use running away from wicked

people, mamma.

LADY BRITOMART. It is every use. It shows your disapprobation of

them.

BARBARA. It does not save them.

LADY BRITOMART. I can see that you are going to disobey me.

Sarah: are you coming home or are you not?

SARAH. I daresay it's very wicked of papa to make cannons; but I

don't think I shall cut him on that account.

LOMAX [pouring oil on the troubled waters] The fact is, you know,

there is a certain amount of tosh about this notion of

wickedness. It doesn't work. You must look at facts. Not that I

would say a word in favor of anything wrong; but then, you see,

all sorts of chaps are always doing all sorts of things; and we

have to fit them in somehow, don't you know. What I mean is that

you can't go cutting everybody; and that's about what it comes

to. [Their rapt attention to his eloquence makes him nervous]

Perhaps I don't make myself clear.

LADY BRITOMART. You are lucidity itself, Charles. Because Andrew

is successful and has plenty of money to give to Sarah, you will

flatter him and encourage him in his wickedness.

LOMAX [unruffled] Well, where the carcase is, there will the

eagles be gathered, don't you know. [To Undershaft] Eh? What?

UNDERSHAFT. Precisely. By the way, may I call you Charles?

LOMAX. Delighted. Cholly is the usual ticket.

UNDERSHAFT [to Lady Britomart] Biddy—

LADY BRITOMART [violently] Don't dare call me Biddy. Charles

Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit.

Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you

are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my

conscience is clear, at all events [she sits down again with a

vehemence that almost wrecks the chair].

UNDERSHAFT. My dear,you are the incarnation of morality. [She

snorts]. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you

have called everybody names. Come, Euripides! it is getting late;

and we all want to get home. Make up your mind.

CUSINS. Understand this, you old demon—

LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!

UNDERSHAFT. Let him alone, Biddy. Proceed, Euripides.

CUSINS. You have me in a horrible dilemma. I want Barbara.

UNDERSHAFT. Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the

difference between one young woman and another.

BARBARA. Quite true, Dolly.

CUSINS. I also want to avoid being a rascal.

UNDERSHAFT [with biting contempt] You lust for personal

righteousness, for self-approval, for what you call a good

conscience, for what Barbara calls salvation, for what I call

patronizing people who are not so lucky as yourself.

CUSINS. I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good

man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity—

UNDERSHAFT. Pity! The scavenger of misery.

CUSINS. Well, love.

UNDERSHAFT. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love

the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the Pole, the

Irishman. Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the Germans? Do

you love the English?

CUSINS. No. Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the

wickedest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror.

UNDERSHAFT. That is what comes of your gospel of love, is it?

CUSINS. May I not love even my father-in-law?

UNDERSHAFT. Who wants your love, man? By what right do you take

the liberty of offering it to me? I will have your due heed and

respect, or I will kill you. But your love! Damn your

impertinence!

CUSINS [grinning] I may not be able to control my affections,

Mac.

UNDERSHAFT. You are fencing, Euripides. You are weakening: your

grip is slipping. Come! try your last weapon. Pity and love have

broken in your hand: forgiveness is still left.

CUSINS. No: forgiveness is a beggar's refuge. I am with you

there: we must pay our debts.

UNDERSHAFT. Well said. Come! you will suit me. Remember the words

of Plato.

CUSINS [starting] Plato! You dare quote Plato to me!

UNDERSHAFT. Plato says, my friend, that society cannot be saved

until either the Professors of Greek take to making gunpowder, or

else the makers of gunpowder become Professors of Greek.

CUSINS. Oh, tempter, cunning tempter!

UNDERSHAFT. Come! choose, man, choose.

CUSINS. But perhaps Barbara will not marry me if I make the wrong

choice.

BARBARA. Perhaps not.

CUSINS [desperately perplexed] You hear—

BARBARA. Father: do you love nobody?

UNDERSHAFT. I love my best friend.

LADY BRITOMART. And who is that, pray?

UNDERSHAFT. My bravest enemy. That is the man who keeps me up to

the mark.

CUSINS. You know, the creature is really a sort of poet in his

way. Suppose he is a great man, after all!

UNDERSHAFT. Suppose you stop talking and make up your mind, my

young friend.

CUSINS. But you are driving me against my nature. I hate war.

UNDERSHAFT. Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

Dare you make war on war? Here are the means: my friend Mr Lomax

is sitting on them.

LOMAX [springing up] Oh I say! You don't mean that this thing is

loaded, do you? My ownest: come off it.

SARAH [sitting placidly on the shell] If I am to be blown up, the

more thoroughly it is done the better. Don't fuss, Cholly.

LOMAX [to Undershaft, strongly remonstrant] Your own daughter,

you know.

UNDERSHAFT. So I see. [To Cusins] Well, my friend, may we expect

you here at six tomorrow morning?

CUSINS [firmly] Not on any account. I will see the whole

establishment blown up with its own dynamite before I will get up

at five. My hours are healthy, rational hours eleven to five.

UNDERSHAFT. Come when you please: before a week you will come at

six and stay until I turn you out for the sake of your health.

[Calling] Bilton! [He turns to Lady Britomart, who rises]. My

dear: let us leave these two young people to themselves for a

moment. [Bilton comes from the shed]. I am going to take you

through the gun cotton shed.

BILTON [barring the way] You can't take anything explosive in

here, Sir.

LADY BRITOMART. What do you mean? Are you alluding to me?

BILTON [unmoved] No, ma'am. Mr Undershaft has the other

gentleman's matches in his pocket.

LADY BRITOMART [abruptly] Oh! I beg your pardon. [She goes into

the shed].

UNDERSHAFT. Quite right, Bilton, quite right: here you are. [He

gives Bilton the box of matches]. Come, Stephen. Come, Charles.

Bring Sarah. [He passes into the shed].

Bilton opens the box and deliberately drops the matches into the

fire-bucket.

LOMAX. Oh I say! [Bilton stolidly hands him the empty box].

Infernal nonsense! Pure scientific ignorance! [He goes in].

SARAH. Am I all right, Bilton?

BILTON. You'll have to put on list slippers, miss: that's all.

We've got em inside. [She goes in].

STEPHEN [very seriously to Cusins] Dolly, old fellow, think.

Think before you decide. Do you feel that you are a sufficiently

practical man? It is a huge undertaking, an enormous

responsibility. All this mass of business will be Greek to you.

CUSINS. Oh, I think it will be much less difficult than Greek.

STEPHEN. Well, I just want to say this before I leave you to

yourselves. Don't let anything I have said about right and wrong

prejudice you against this great chance in life. I have satisfied

myself that the business is one of the highest character and a

credit to our country. [Emotionally] I am very proud of my

father. I—[Unable to proceed, he presses Cusins' hand and goes

hastily into the shed, followed by Bilton].

Barbara and Cusins, left alone together, look at one another

silently.

CUSINS. Barbara: I am going to accept this offer.

BARBARA. I thought you would.

CUSINS. You understand, don't you, that I had to decide without

consulting you. If I had thrown the burden of the choice on you,

you would sooner or later have despised me for it.

BARBARA. Yes: I did not want you to sell your soul for me any

more than for this inheritance.

CUSINS. It is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have

sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a

professorship. I have sold it for an income. I have sold it to

escape being imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes for hangmen's

ropes and unjust wars and things that I abhor. What is all human

conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles?

What I am now selling it for is neither money nor position nor

comfort, but for reality and for power.

BARBARA. You know that you will have no power, and that he has

none.

CUSINS. I know. It is not for myself alone. I want to make power

for the world.

BARBARA. I want to make power for the world too; but it must be

spiritual power.

CUSINS. I think all power is spiritual: these cannons will not go

off by themselves. I have tried to make spiritual power by

teaching Greek. But the world can never be really touched by a

dead language and a dead civilization. The people must have

power; and the people cannot have Greek. Now the power that is

made here can be wielded by all men.

BARBARA. Power to burn women's houses down and kill their sons

and tear their husbands to pieces.

CUSINS. You cannot have power for good without having power for

evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as

heroes. This power which only tears men's bodies to pieces has

never been so horribly abused as the intellectual power, the

imaginative power, the poetic, religious power that can enslave

men's souls. As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man

weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man

weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I

want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the

literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who,

once in authority, are the most dangerous, disastrous, and

tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors. I want a

democratic power strong enough to force the intellectual

oligarchy to use its genius for the general good or else perish.

BARBARA. Is there no higher power than that [pointing to the

shell]?

CUSINS. Yes: but that power can destroy the higher powers just as

a tiger can destroy a man: therefore man must master that power

first. I admitted this when the Turks and Greeks were last at

war. My best pupil went out to fight for Hellas. My parting gift

to him was not a copy of Plato's Republic, but a revolver and a

hundred Undershaft cartridges. The blood of every Turk he shot—

if he shot any—is on my head as well as on Undershaft's. That

act committed me to this place for ever. Your father's challenge

has beaten me. Dare I make war on war? I dare. I must. I will.

And now, is it all over between us?

BARBARA [touched by his evident dread of her answer] Silly baby

Dolly! How could it be?

CUSINS [overjoyed] Then you—you—you—Oh for my drum! [He

flourishes imaginary drumsticks].

BARBARA [angered by his levity] Take care, Dolly, take care. Oh,

if only I could get away from you and from father and from it

all! if I could have the wings of a dove and fly away to heaven!

CUSINS. And leave me!

BARBARA. Yes, you, and all the other naughty mischievous children

of men. But I can't. I was happy in the Salvation Army for a

moment. I escaped from the world into a paradise of enthusiasm

and prayer and soul saving; but the moment our money ran short,

it all came back to Bodger: it was he who saved our people: he,

and the Prince of Darkness, my papa. Undershaft and Bodger: their

hands stretch everywhere: when we feed a starving fellow

creature, it is with their bread, because there is no other

bread; when we tend the sick, it is in the hospitals they endow;

if we turn from the churches they build, we must kneel on the

stones of the streets they pave. As long as that lasts, there is

no getting away from them. Turning our backs on Bodger and

Undershaft is turning our backs on life.

CUSINS. I thought you were determined to turn your back on the

wicked side of life.

BARBARA. There is no wicked side: life is all one. And I never

wanted to shirk my share in whatever evil must be endured,

whether it be sin or suffering. I wish I could cure you of

middle-class ideas, Dolly.

CUSINS [gasping] Middle cl—! A snub! A social snub to ME! from

the daughter of a foundling!

BARBARA. That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out

of the heart of the whole people. If I were middle-class I should

turn my back on my father's business; and we should both live in

an artistic drawingroom, with you reading the reviews in one

corner, and I in the other at the piano, playing Schumann: both

very superior persons, and neither of us a bit of use. Sooner

than that, I would sweep out the guncotton shed, or be one of

Bodger's barmaids. Do you know what would have happened if you

had refused papa's offer?

CUSINS. I wonder!

BARBARA. I should have given you up and married the man who

accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than

any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place—felt that I

must have it—that never, never, never could I let it go; only

she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the

linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be

saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude or

a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish,

uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and

dignities, and thinking that my father ought to be greatly

obliged to them for making so much money for him—and so he

ought. That is where salvation is really wanted. My father shall

never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed

with bread. [She is transfigured]. I have got rid of the bribe of

bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work be

done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because

it cannot he done by living men and women. When I die, let him be

in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a

woman of my rank.

CUSINS. Then the way of life lies through the factory of death?

BARBARA. Yes, through the raising of hell to heaven and of man to

God, through the unveiling of an eternal light in the Valley of

The Shadow. [Seizing him with both hands] Oh, did you think my

courage would never come back? did you believe that I was a

deserter? that I, who have stood in the streets, and taken my

people to my heart, and talked of the holiest and greatest things

with them, could ever turn back and chatter foolishly to

fashionable people about nothing in a drawingroom? Never, never,

never, never: Major Barbara will die with the colors. Oh! and I

have my dear little Dolly boy still; and he has found me my place

and my work. Glory Hallelujah! [She kisses him].

CUSINS. My dearest: consider my delicate health. I cannot stand

as much happiness as you can.

BARBARA. Yes: it is not easy work being in love with me, is it?

But it's good for you. [She runs to the shed, and calls,

childlike] Mamma! Mamma! [Bilton comes out of the shed, followed

by Undershaft]. I want Mamma.

UNDERSHAFT. She is taking off her list slippers, dear. [He passes

on to Cusins]. Well? What does she say?

CUSINS. She has gone right up into the skies.

LADY BRITOMART [coming from the shed and stopping on the steps,

obstructing Sarah, who follows with Lomax. Barbara clutches like

a baby at her mother's skirt]. Barbara: when will you learn to be

independent and to act and think for yourself? I know as well as

possible what that cry of "Mamma, Mamma," means. Always running

to me!

SARAH [touching Lady Britomart's ribs with her finger tips and

imitating a bicycle horn] Pip! Pip!

LADY BRITOMART [highly indignant] How dare you say Pip! pip! to

me, Sarah? You are both very naughty children. What do you want,

Barbara?

BARBARA. I want a house in the village to live in with Dolly.

[Dragging at the skirt] Come and tell me which one to take.

UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins] Six o'clock tomorrow morning, my young

friend.friend.