Plays Political
Page 34
JUDGE. What, exactly, do you mean by sanctions, Sir Midlander?
SIR O. I mean what everybody means. Sanctions, you know. That is plain English. Oil, for instance.
JUDGE. Castor oil?
SIR O. No no: motor oil. The stuff you run your aeroplanes on.
JUDGE. Motor oil is a sanction when you withhold it. Castor oil is a sanction when you administer it. Is there any other difference?
SIR O. [smiling] Well, that has never occurred to me before; but now you mention it there is certainly an analogy. But in England the castor oil business is just one of those things that are not done. Castor oil is indecent. Motor oil is all right.
JUDGE. Well, you need not fear that the Hague will resort to any other sanction than the sacredness of justice. It will affirm this sacredness and make the necessary applications. It is the business of a judge to see that there is no wrong without a remedy. Your Committee for Intellectual Co-operation has been appealed to by four persons who have suffered grievous wrongs. It has very properly referred them to the International Court. As president of that court it is my business to find a remedy for their wrongs; and I shall do so to the best of my ability even if my decisions should form the beginning of a new code of international law and be quite unprecedented.
SIR O. But, my dear sir, what practical steps do you propose to take? What steps can you take?
JUDGE. I have already taken them. I have fixed a day for the trial of the cases, and summoned the plaintiffs and defendants to attend the court.
THE SECRETARY. But the defendants are the responsible heads of sovereign States. Do you suppose for a moment that they will obey your summons?
JUDGE. We shall see. That, in fact, is the object of my experiment. We shall see. [He rises] And now I must ask you to excuse me. Sir Midlander: our interview has been most instructive to me as to the attitude of your country. Mr Secretary: you are very good to have spared me so much of your valuable time. Good afternoon, gentlemen. [He goes out].
SIR O. What are we to do with men like that?
THE SECRETARY. What are they going to do with us? That is the question we have to face now.
SIR O. Pooh! They cant do anything, you know, except make speeches and write articles. They are free to do that in England. British liberty is a most useful safety valve.
THE SECRETARY. I was on his honor’s side myself once, until my official experience here taught me how hopeless it is to knock supernationalism—
SIR O. Super what? Did you say supernaturalism?
THE SECRETARY. No. Supernationalism.
SIR O. Oh, I see. Internationalism.
THE SECRETARY. No. Internationalism is nonsense. Pushing all the nations into Geneva is like throwing all the fishes into the same pond: they just begin eating oneanother. We need something higher than nationalism : a genuine political and social catholicism. How are you to get that from these patriots, with their national anthems and flags and dreams of war and conquest rubbed into them from their childhood? The organization of nations is the organization of world war. If two men want to fight how do you prevent them? By keeping them apart, not by bringing them together. When the nations kept apart war was an occasional and exceptional thing: now the League hangs over Europe like a perpetual warcloud.
SIR O. Well, dont throw it at my head as if I disagreed with you.
THE SECRETARY. I beg your pardon. I am worried by this crisis. Let us talk business. What are we to do with Begonia Brown?
SIR O. Do with her! Squash her, impudent little slut. She is nobody: she doesnt matter.
The conversation is abruptly broken by the irruption of Begonia herself in a state of ungovernable excitement.
BEGONIA. Have you heard the news? [Seeing Sir Orpheus] Oh, I beg your pardon: I didnt know you were engaged.
THE SECRETARY. This is Sir Orpheus Midlander, the British Foreign Secretary, Miss Brown.
BEGONIA. Oh, most pleased to meet you, Sir Orpheus. I know your nephew. We are quite dear friends [she shakes Sir O.’s hand effusively]. Have you heard the news? Lord Middlesex is dead.
SIR O. Indeed? Let me see. Middlesex? I dont attach any significance to the news. He must have been a backwoodsman. Remind me about him.
BEGONIA. His son is Lord Newcross.
SIR O. Oh! Then Newcross goes to the Lords to succeed his father. That means a by-election in Camberwell.
BEGONIA. Yes; and the Conservatives want me to stand.
BOTH GENTLEMEN. What!!!
BEGONIA. Dont you think I ought to? I have been a lot in the papers lately. It’s six hundred a year for me if I get in. I shall be the patriotic candidate; and the Labor vote will be a split vote; for the Communists are putting up a candidate against the Labor man; and the Liberals are contesting the seat as well. It will be just a walk-over for me.
SIR O. But my nephew is the Government candidate. Has he not told you so?
BEGONIA. Oh, thats quite all right. He has withdrawn and proposed me. He’ll pay my election expenses.
SIR O. I thought he was in Singapore.
BEGONIA. So he is. It’s all been done by cable. Ive just this minute heard it. You see, dear Billikins is not very bright; and he’d better not be here to muddle everything up. [She sits].
SIR O. But will his committee accept you?
BEGONIA. Only too glad to get a candidate that will do them credit. You see, no matter how carefully they coached Bill for the public meetings he made the most awful exhibition of himself. And he knew it, poor lamb, and would never have gone in for it if his mother hadnt made him.
SIR O. And do you think you will be able to make a better impression at the meetings? You are not a politician, are you?
BEGONIA. The same as anybody else, I suppose. I shall pick up all the politics I need when I get into the House; and I shall get into the House because there are lots of people in Camberwell who think as I do. You bet I shall romp in at the head of the poll. I am quite excited about it. [To the Secretary] You were so kind to me just now that I thought you had a right to know before anyone else. [To Sir O.] And it’s splendid news for the Government, isnt it, Sir Orpheus?
SIR O. Thrilling, Miss Brown.
BEGONIA. Oh, do call me Begonia. We’re as good as related, arnt we?
SIR O. I am afraid so.
BEGONIA. I am sure to get in, arnt I?
SIR O. If your three opponents are foolish enough to go to the poll, it’s a cert.
BEGONIA. Yes: isnt it? I wonder would you mind lending me my fare to London. I dont like taking money off Billikins. I will pay you when my ship comes home: the six hundred a year, you know.
SIR O. Will a five pound note be any use [he produces one]?
BEGONIA [taking it] Thanks ever so much: itll just see me through. And now I must toddle off to my little constituency. I have barely time to pack for the night train. Goodbye, Mr Secretary [They shake hands]; and [to Sir O. effusively] thanks ever so much, and au revoir. [She goes out].
THE SECRETARY. What an amazing young woman! You really think she will get in?
SIR O. Of course she will. She has courage, sincerity, good looks, and big publicity as the Geneva heroine. Everything that our voters love.
THE SECRETARY. But she hasnt a political idea in her head.
SIR O. She need not have. The Whips will pilot her through the division lobby until she knows the way. She need not know anything else.
THE SECRETARY. But she is a complete ignoramus. She will give herself away every time she opens her mouth.
SIR O. Not at all. She will say pluckily and sincerely just what she feels and thinks. You heard her say that there are lots of people in Camberwell who feel and think as she does. Well, the House of Commons is exactly like Camberwell in that respect.
THE SECRETARY. But can you contemplate such a state of things without dismay?
SIR O. Of course I can. I contemplated my nephew’s candidature without dismay.
THE SECRETARY. The world is mad. Quite mad.
SI
R O. Pooh! you need a cup of tea. Nothing wrong with the world: nothing whatever.
THE SECRETARY [resignedly sitting down and speaking into the telephone] Tea for two, please.
[ ACT III ]
* * *
Afternoon in the lounge of a fashionable restaurant overlooking the Lake of Geneva. Three tea tables, with two chairs at each, are in view. There is a writing table against the wall. The Secretary is seated at the centre table, reading a magazine. The American journalist comes in flourishing a cablegram.
* * *
THE JOURNALIST. Heard the news, boss?
THE SECRETARY. What news? Anything fresh from the Hague?
THE JOURNALIST. Yes. The International Court has abolished Intellectual Co-operation [he seats himself at the next table on the Secretary’s left].
THE SECRETARY. What!
THE JOURNALIST. They have had enough of it. The Court also finds the big Powers guilty of flagrant contempt of the League Covenant.
THE SECRETARY. So they are, of course. But the League was doing as well as could be expected until Dame Begonia took a hand in it. By the way, have you heard the latest about her?
THE JOURNALIST. No. She has dropped me completely since she became a Dame of the British Empire.
THE SECRETARY. Well, at a fashion demonstration in the Albert Hall, some blackshirt thought it would be a good joke to pretend to forget her name and call her Mongolia Muggins. Sixteen newspapers quoted this; and Begonia took an action against every one of them. They settled with her for three hundred apiece. Begonia must have netted at least four thousand.
THE JOURNALIST. And to think I might have married that girl if only I had had the foresight to push myself on her!
THE SECRETARY. Ah! A great opportunity missed: she would have made a most comfortable wife. Pleasant-looking, good-natured, able to see everything within six inches of her nose and nothing beyond. A domestic paragon: a political idiot. In short, an ideal wife.
The widow enters on the arm of Sir Orpheus Midlander. She still carries her handbag, heavy with the weight of her pistol.
SIR O. I assure you, señora, this is the only place in Geneva where you can be perfectly happy after a perfect tea.
THE WIDOW. It is easy for you to be happy. But think of this weight continually hanging on my arm, and reminding me at every moment of my tragic destiny.
SIR O. Oh, you must allow me to carry it for you. I had no idea it was heavy. Do you keep all your money in it?
THE WIDOW. Money! No: it is this [she takes the weapon from it and throws it on the nearest table on the Secretary’s right. The pair seat themselves there].
SIR O. Good gracious! What do you carry that for? It is against the law in Geneva.
THE WIDOW. There is no longer any law in Geneva. The Hague has abolished the Intellectual Committee, leaving my husband’s murder still unexpiated. That throws me back on the blood feud. Properly this is the business of my son. I cabled him to shoot the usurping president at once. But the boy is a shameless dastard.
SIR O. A bastard!
THE WIDOW. No: I wish he were: he has disgraced me. A dastard, a coward. He has become a Communist, and pretends that the blood feud is a bourgeois tradition, contrary to the teachings of Karl Marx.
SIR O. Well, so much the better. I can hardly believe that Marx taught anything so entirely reasonable and proper as that it is wrong to shoot a president; but if he did I must say I agree with him.
THE WIDOW. But public opinion in the Earthly Paradise would never tolerate such a monstrous violation of natural justice as leaving the murder of a father unavenged. If our relatives could be murdered with impunity we should have people shooting them all over the place. Even cousins five times removed have to be avenged if they have no nearer relative to take on that duty.
SIR O. Dear me! But if your son wont, he wont; and there is an end to it. A very happy end, if I may say so.
THE WIDOW. An end of it! Nothing of the sort. If my son will not shoot the president, I shall have to do it myself. The president has two brothers who will shoot me unless I stay in this ghastly Europe instead of returning to my beloved Earthly Paradise.
SIR O. To me as an Englishman, all this seems ridiculous. You really need not shoot him.
THE WIDOW. You dont know how strong public opinion is in the Earthly Paradise. You couldnt live there if you defied it. And then there is my own sense of right and wrong. You mustnt think I have no conscience.
SIR O. People have such extraordinary consciences when they have not been educated at an English public school! [To the secretary] Talking of that, have you read the Prime Minister’s speech in the debate on the League last night?
THE SECRETARY [illhumoredly] Yes. Half about Harrow as a nursery for statesmen, and the other half about the sacredness of treaties. He might have shewn some consideration for me.
SIR O. But, my dear fellow, in what way could his speech have possibly hurt you? He has made that speech over and over again. You know very well that after a certain age a man has only one speech. And you have never complained before.
THE SECRETARY. Well, he had better get a new speech, and stop talking about the sacredness of treaties. Will you fellows in London never take the trouble to read the Covenant of the League? It entirely abolishes the sacredness of treaties. Article 26 expressly provides for the revision and amendment both of the treaties and the League itself.
SIR O. But how can that be? Surely the League was created to see the Treaty of Versailles carried out. With what other object would we have joined it?
THE SECRETARY [desperately] Oh, there is no use talking to you. You all come here to push your own countries without the faintest notion of what the League is for; and I have to sit here listening to foreign ministers explaining to me that their countries are the greatest countries in the world and their people God’s chosen race. You are supposed to be international statesmen; but none of you could keep a coffee stall at Limehouse because you would have to be equally civil to sailors of all nations.
SIR O. Nerves, my dear boy, nerves. I sometimes feel like that myself. I tell my wife I am sick of the whole business, and am going to resign; but the mood passes.
The Jew enters, in animated conversation with the quondam newcomer. The rest become discreetly silent, but keep their ears open.
THE JEW. My good sir, what is your grievance compared to mine? Have you been robbed? Have you been battered with clubs? gassed? massacred? Have you been commercially and socially ruined? Have you been imprisoned in concentration camps commanded by hooligans? Have you been driven out of your country to starve in exile?
THE NEWCOMER. No; but if the people vote for it there is no violation of democratic principle in it. Your people voted ten to one for getting rid of the Jews. Hadnt they the right to choose the sort of people they would allow to live in their own country? Look at the British! Will they allow a yellow man into Australia? Look at the Americans! Will they let a Jap into California? See what happened to the British Government in 1906 when it wanted to let Chinese labor into Lancashire!
THE JEW. Your own country! Who made you a present of a piece of God’s earth?
THE NEWCOMER. I was born on it, wasnt I?
THE JEW. And was not I born in the country from which I have been cast out?
THE NEWCOMER. You oughtnt to have been born there. You ought to have been born in Jerusalem.
THE JEW. And you, my friend, ought never to have been born at all. You claim a right to shut me out of the world; but you burn with indignation because you yourself have been shut out of your trumpery little parliament.
THE NEWCOMER. Easy! easy! dont lose your temper. I dont want to shut you out of the world: all I say is that you are not in the world on democratic principles; but I ought to be in parliament on democratic principles. If I shoot a Jew, thats murder; and I ought to be hanged for it. But if I vote for a Jew, as I often have,
and he is elected and then not let into Parliament, what becomes of democracy?
THE NEWCOMER. It’s a bit hard on you, I admit. But it’s not a matter of principle.
THE WIDOW [to the Jew] Do you know what I would do if I were a president?
THE JEW. No, madam. But it would interest me to hear it.
THE WIDOW. I would shoot every Jew in the country: that is what I would do.