Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw [bookstand for reading txt] 📗

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 guncotton shed. Undershaft Barring the way. You can’t take anything explosive in here, Sir. Lady Britomart What do you mean? Are you alluding to me? Undershaft 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? Undershaft 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