Collected Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
in the school?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Is it about Ireland?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Is it about Germany?
CONRAD. No.
BURGE. Well, is it about Republicanism? Come! I wont flinch. Is it about the Monarchy?
CONRAD. No.
SURGE. Well, what the devil is it about, then?
CONRAD. You understand that I am asking the question in the character of a laborer who earned thirteen shillings a week before the war and earns thirty now, when he can get it?
BURGE. Yes: I understand that. I am ready for you. Out with it.
CONRAD. And whom you propose to represent n parliament?
SURGE. Yes, yes, yes. Come on.
CONRAD. The question is this. Would you allow your son to marry my daughter, or your daughter to marry my son?
BURGE [taken aback] Oh, come! Thats not a political question.
CONRAD. Then, as a biologist, I don't take the slightest interest in your politics; and I shall not walk across the street to vote for you or anyone else at the election. Good evening.
LUBIN. Serve you right, Burge! Dr Barnabas: you have my assurance that my daughter shall marry the man of her choice, whether he be lord or laborer. May I count on your support?
SURGE [hurling the epithet at him] Humbug!
SAVVY. Stop. [They all stop short in the movement of leave-taking to look at her]. Daddy: are you going to let them off like this? How are they to know anything if nobody ever tells them? If you don't, I will.
CONRAD. You cant. You didn't read my book; and you know nothing about it. You just hold your tongue.
SAVVY. I just wont, Nunk. I shall have a vote when I am thirty; and I ought to have it now. Why are these two ridiculous people to be allowed to come in and walk over us as if the world existed only to play their silly parliamentary game?
FRANKLYN [severely] Savvy: you really must not be uncivil to our guests.
SAVVY. I'm sorry. But Mr Lubin didn't stand on much ceremony with me, did he? And Mr Burge hasnt addressed a single word to me. I'm not going to stand it. You and Nunk have a much better program than either of them. It's the only one we are going to vote for; and they ought to be told about it for the credit of the family and the good of their own souls. You just tip them a chapter from the gospel of the brothers Barnabas, Daddy.
Lubin and Burge turn inquiringly to Franklyn, suspecting a move to form a new party.
FRANKLYN. It is quite true, Mr Lubin, that I and my brother have a little program of our own which—
CONRAD [interrupting] It's not a little program: it's an almighty big one. It's not our own: it's the program of the whole of civilization.
BURGE. Then why split the party before you have put it to us? For God's sake let us have no more splits. I am here to learn. I am here to gather your opinions and represent them. I invite you to put your views before me. I offer myself to be heckled. You have asked me only an absurd non-political question.
FRANKLYN. Candidly, I fear our program will be thrown away on you. It would not interest you.
BURGE [with challenging audacity] Try. Lubin can go if he likes; but I am still open to new ideas, if only I can find them.
FRANKLYN [to Lubin] Are you prepared to listen, Mr Lubin; or shall I thank you for your very kind and welcome visit, and say good evening?
LUBIN [sitting down resignedly on the settee, but involuntarily making a movement which looks like the stifling of a yawn] With pleasure, Mr Barnabas. Of course you know that before I can adopt any new plank in the party platform, it will have to reach me through the National Liberal Federation, which you can approach through your local Liberal and Radical Association.
FRANKLYN. I could recall to you several instances of the addition to your party program of measures of which no local branch of your Federation had ever dreamt. But I understand that you are not really interested. I will spare you, and drop the subject.
LUBIN [waking up a little] You quite misunderstand me. Please do not take it in that way. I only—
BURGE [talking him down] Never mind the Federation: I will answer for the Federation. Go on, Barnabas: go on. Never mind Lubin [he sits down in the chair from which Lubin first displaced him].
FRANKLYN. Our program is only that the term of human life shall be extended to three hundred years.
LUBIN [softly] Eh?
BURGE [explosively] What!
SAVVY. Our election cry is 'Back to Methuselah!'
HASLAM. Priceless!
Lubin and Surge look at one another.
CONRAD. No. We are not mad.
SAVVY. Theyre not joking either. They mean it.
LUBIN [cautiously] Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what this has to do with politics?
FRANKLYN. The connection is very evident. You are now, Mr Lubin, within immediate reach of your seventieth year. Mr Joyce Surge is your junior by about eleven years. You will go down to posterity as one of a European group of immature statesmen and monarchs who, doing the very best for your respective countries of which you were capable, succeeded in all-but-wrecking the civilization of Europe, and did, in effect, wipe out of existence many millions of its inhabitants.
BURGE. Less than a million.
FRANKLYN. That was our loss alone.
BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners—!
HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
SAVVY [with intense satisfaction] Well said, Bill.
FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity. What with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our systems of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on to control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their being entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God, much less to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at war again.
CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their own government.
LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations very acutely.
BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power above us.
CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies—Dilke's, for instance—which revealed the truth about them?
LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr Barnabas.
FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by a little woman who knew her