Plays Political

by Dan Laurence

  THE JEW. Pray why?

  THE WIDOW. Because they crucified my Savior: that is why. I am a religious woman; and when I meet a God murderer I can hardly keep my hands off my gun.

  THE JEW. After all, madam, your Savior was a Jew.

  THE WIDOW. Oh, what a horrible blasphemy! [she reaches for her pistol].

  Sir Orpheus seizes her wrist. The Secretary secures her left arm.

  THE WIDOW [struggling] Let me go. How dare you touch me? If you were Christians you would help me to kill this dirty Jew. Did you hear what he said?

  SIR O. Yes, yes, señora: I heard. I assure you he did not mean to blaspheme. Ethnologically, you know, he was right. Only ethnologically, of course.

  THE WIDOW. I do not understand that long word. Our Savior and his Virgin Mother were good Catholics, were they not?

  SIR O. No doubt, señora, no doubt. We are all good Catholics, I hope, in a sense. You will remember that our Savior was of the house of King David.

  THE WIDOW. You will be telling me next that King David was a Jew, I suppose.

  SIR O. Well, ethnologically—

  THE WIDOW. Eth no fiddlesticks. Give me my gun.

  SIR O. I think you had better let me carry it for you, señora. You shall have it when this gentleman has gone.

  THE NEWCOMER. Give it to the police. That woman is not safe.

  THE WIDOW. I spit upon you.

  SIR O. The police would arrest her for carrying arms.

  THE WIDOW. Three men and a Jew against one disarmed woman! Cowards.

  THE JEW. Fortunate for you, madam, and for me. But for these three gentlemen you would soon be awaiting death at the hands of the public executioner; and I should be a corpse.

  THE JOURNALIST. A cadaver. Put it nicely. A cadaver.

  THE WIDOW. Do you believe that any jury would find me guilty for ridding the world of a Jew?

  THE JEW. One can never be quite certain, madam. If there were women on the jury, or some Jews, your good looks might not save you.

  THE WIDOW. Women on juries are an abomination. Only a Jew could mention such a thing to a lady [she gives up the struggle and resumes her seat].

  The Commissar comes in with Begonia and the Judge, of whom she has evidently made a conquest.

  BEGONIA [TO THE SECRETARY] Good evening, boss. Cheerio, Sir Orpheus. You remember me, señora. You know the judge, boss.

  THE SECRETARY. Do me the honor to share my table, your honor.

  THE JUDGE. Thank you. May I introduce Commissar Posky. [He seats himself on the Secretary’s left].

  THE SECRETARY. We have met. Pray be seated.

  THE JOURNALIST. Take my place, Commissar. I must get on with my work. [He retires to the writing table, where he sits and sets to work writing his press messages, withdrawing from the conversation, but keeping his ears open].

  THE COMMISSAR [taking the vacated seat beside the Newcomer] I thank you.

  THE SECRETARY. There is room for you here, Dame Begonia [indicating chair on his right].

  BEGONIA [taking it] There is always room at the top.

  THE COMMISSAR. I represent the Soviet.

  THE WIDOW [exploding again] Another Jew!!!

  THE SECRETARY. No, no. You have Jews on the brain.

  THE WIDOW. He is a Bolshevist. All Bolshevists are Jews. Do you realize that if I lived under the horrible tyranny of the Soviet I should be shot?

  THE JEW. I take that to be a very striking proof of the superior civilization of Russia.

  THE COMMISSAR. Why should we shoot her, comrade?

  THE JEW. She has just tried to shoot me.

  THE COMMISSAR. We do not shoot Jews as such: we civilize them. You see, a Communist State is only possible for highly civilized people, trained to Communism from their childhood. The people we shoot are gangsters and speculators and exploiters and scoundrels of all sorts who are encouraged in other countries in the name of liberty and democracy.

  THE NEWCOMER [starting up] Not a word against liberty and democracy in my presence! Do you hear?

  THE COMMISSAR. And not a word against Communism in mine. Agreed?

  THE NEWCOMER [sits down sulkily] Oh, all right.

  THE COMMISSAR [continuing] I find it very difficult to accustom myself to the exaggerated importance you all attach to sex in these western countries. This handsome lady, it seems, has some lover’s quarrel with this handsome gentleman.

  THE WIDOW. A lover’s quarrel!!!

  THE COMMISSAR. In the U.S.S.R. that would be a triviality. At the very worst it would end in a divorce. But here she tries to shoot him.

  THE WIDOW. You are mad. And divorce is a deadly sin: only Bolsheviks and Protestants would allow such an infamy. They will all go to hell for it. As to my loving this man, I hate, loathe, and abhor him. He would steal my child and cut it in pieces and sprinkle its blood on his threshold. He is a Jew.

  THE COMMISSAR. Come to Russia. Jews do not do such things there. No doubt they are capable of anything when they are corrupted by Capitalism.

  THE JEW. Lies! lies! Excuses for robbing and murdering us.

  THE COMMISSAR. For that, comrade, one excuse is as good as another. I am not a Jew; but the lady may shoot me because I am a Communist.

  THE WIDOW. How can I shoot you ? They have stolen my gun. Besides, shooting Communists is not a religious duty but a political one; and in my country women do not meddle in politics.

  THE COMMISSAR. Then I am safe.

  BEGONIA [recovering from her astonishment at the shooting conversation] But dont you know, señora, that you mustnt go about shooting people here? It may be all right in your country; but here it isnt done.

  THE WIDOW. Where I am is my country. What is right in my country cannot be wrong in yours.

  SIR O. Ah, if you were a Foreign Secretary—

  THE SECRETARY. If you were the secretary of the League of Nations—

  SIR O. You would make the curious discovery that one nation’s right is another nation’s wrong. There is only one way of reconciling all the nations in a real league, and that is to convert them all to English ideas.

  THE COMMISSAR. But all the world is in revolt against English ideas, especially the English themselves. The future is for Russian ideas.

  THE NEWCOMER. Where did Russia get her ideas? From England. In Russia Karl Marx would have been sent to Siberia and flogged to death. In England he was kept in the British Museum at the public expense and let write what he liked. England is the country where, as the poet says, “A man may say the thing he wills—”

  THE JUDGE. Pardon me: that is an illusion. I have gone into that question; and I can assure you that when the British Government is alarmed there are quite as many prosecutions for sedition, blasphemy and obscenity as in any other country. The British Government has just passed a new law under which any person obnoxious to the Government can be imprisoned for opening his mouth or dipping his pen in the ink.

  SIR O. Yes; but whose fault is that? Your Russian propaganda. Freedom of thought and speech is the special glory of Britain; but surely you dont expect us to allow your missionaries to preach Bolshevism, do you?

  THE COMMISSAR [laughing] I dont expect any government to tolerate any doctrine that threatens its existence or the incomes of its rulers. The only difference is that in Russia we dont pretend to tolerate such doctrines; and in England you do. Why do you give yourselves that unnecessary and dangerous trouble?

  THE NEWCOMER. Karl Marx was tolerated in England: he wouldnt have been tolerated in Russia.

  THE COMMISSAR. That was a weakness in the British system, not a virtue. If the British Government had known and understood what Marx was doing, and what its effect was going to be on the mind of the world, it would have sent him to prison and destroyed every scrap of his handwriting and every copy of his books. But they did not know where to strike. They persecuted poor men for making profane jokes; they suppressed newspapers in England as well as in Ireland; they dismissed editors who were too independent and outspoken; they burnt the boo
ks of novelists who had gone a little too far in dealing with sex; they imprisoned street corner speakers on charges of obstructing traffic; and all the time they were providing Karl Marx with the finest reading room in the world whilst he was writing their death warrants.

  SIR O. Those warrants have not yet been executed in England. They never will be. The world may be jolted out of its tracks for a moment by the shock of a war as a railway train may be thrown off the rails; but it soon settles into its old grooves. You are a Bolshevik; but nobody would know it. You have the appearance, the dress, the culture of a gentleman: your clothes might have been made within half a mile of Hanover Square.

  THE COMMISSAR. As a matter of fact they were: I buy them in London.

  SIR O. [triumphant] You see! You have given up all this Marxian nonsense and gone back to the capitalist system. I always said you would.

  THE COMMISSAR. If it pleases you to think so, Sir Orpheus, I shall do nothing to disturb your happiness. Will you be so good as to convey to your Government my great regret and that of the Soviet Cabinet that your bishop should have died of his personal contact with Russian ideas. I blame myself for not having been more considerate. But I had never met that kind of man before. The only other British Bishop I had met was nearly seven feet high, an athlete, and a most revolutionary preacher.

  SIR O. That is what makes the Church of England so easy to deal with. No types. Just English gentlemen. Not like Catholic priests.

  THE WIDOW. Oh, Sir Orpheus! You, of all men, to insult my faith!

  SIR O. Not at all, not at all, I assure you. I have the greatest respect for the Catholic faith. But you cannot deny that your priests have a professional air. They are not like other men. Our English clergy are not like that. You would not know that they were clergy at all if it were not for their collars.

  THE WIDOW. I call that wicked. A priest should not be like other men.

  THE COMMISSAR. Have you ever tried to seduce a priest, madam?

  THE WIDOW. Give me my gun. This is monstrous. Have Bolsheviks no decency?

  THE NEWCOMER. I knew a priest once who—

  THE SECRETARY. No, please. The subject is a dangerous one.

  THE COMMISSAR. All subjects are dangerous in Geneva, are they not?

  THE JUDGE. Pardon me. It is not the subjects that are dangerous in Geneva, but the people.

  THE WIDOW. Jews! Bolsheviks! Gunmen!

  THE JEW. What about gunwomen? Gunmolls they are called in America. Pardon my reminding you.

  THE WIDOW. You remind me of nothing that I can decently mention.

  THE NEWCOMER. Hullo, maam! You know, ladies dont say things like that in my country.

  THE WIDOW. They do in mine. What I have said I have said.

  THE JUDGE. When the International Court was moved to action by the enterprise of my friend Dame Begonia, it found that the moment the League of Nations does anything on its own initiative and on principle, it produces, not peace, but threats of war or secession or both which oblige it to stop hastily and do nothing until the Great Powers have decided among themselves to make use of it as an instrument of their oldfashioned diplomacy. That is true, Mr Secretary, is it not?

  THE SECRETARY. It is too true. Yet it is not altogether true. Those who think the League futile dont know what goes on here. They dont know what Geneva means to us. The Powers think we are nothing but their catspaw. They flout us openly by ignoring the Covenant and making unilateral treaties that should be made by us. They have driven us underground as if we were a criminal conspiracy. But in little ways of which the public knows nothing we sidetrack them. We sabotage them. We shame them. We make things difficult or impossible that used to be easy. You dont know what the atmosphere of Geneva is. When I came here I was a patriot, a Nationalist, regarding my appointment as a win for my own country in the diplomatic game. But the atmosphere of Geneva changed me. I am now an Internationalist. I am the ruthless enemy of every nation, my own included. Let me be frank. I hate the lot of you.

  ALL THE OTHERS. Oh!

  THE SECRETARY. Yes I do. You the Jew there: I hate you because you are a Jew.

  THE JEW. A German Jew.

  THE SECRETARY. Worse and worse. Two nationalities are worse than one. This gunwoman here: I hate her because she is heaven knows what mixture of Spaniard and Indian and savage.

  THE WIDOW. Men with red blood in them do not hate me.

  THE SECRETARY. You, Sir Orpheus, are an amiable and honest man. Well, I never hear you talking politics without wanting to shoot you.

  SIR O. Dear me! Fortunately I have the lady’s gun in my pocket. But of course I dont believe you.

  THE SECRETARY. If you had the Geneva spirit you would believe me. This Russian here: I hate him because his Government has declared for Socialism in a single country.

  THE COMMISSAR. You are a Trotskyite then?

  THE SECRETARY. Trotsky is nothing to me; but I hate all frontiers; and you have shut yourself into frontiers.

  THE COMMISSAR. Only because infinite space is too much for us to manage. Be reasonable.

  THE SECRETARY. On this subject I am not reasonable. I am sick of reasonable people: they see all the reasons for being lazy and doing nothing.

  THE NEWCOMER. And what price me? Come on. Dont leave me out.

  THE SECRETARY. You! You are some sort of half-Americanized colonist. You are a lower middle-class politician. Your pose is that of the rugged individualist, the isolationist, at bottom an Anarchist.

  THE NEWCOMER. Anarchist yourself. Anyhow I have more common sense than you: I dont hate all my fellow creatures.

  THE SECRETARY. You are all enemies of the human race. You are all armed to the teeth and full of patriotism. Your national heroes are all brigands and pirates. When it comes to the point you are all cut-throats. But Geneva will beat you yet. Not in my time, perhaps. But the Geneva spirit is a fact; and a spirit is a fact that cannot be killed.

  ALL THE REST. But—

  THE SECRETARY [shouting them down] I am not going to argue with you: you are all too damnably stupid.

  SIR O. Are you sure you are quite well this afternoon? I have always believed in you and supported you as England’s truest friend at Geneva.

  THE SECRETARY. You were quite right. I am the truest friend England has here. I am the truest friend of all the Powers if they only knew it. That is the strength of my position here. Each of you thinks I am on his side. If you hint that I am mad or drunk I shall hint that you are going gaga and that it is time for the British Empire to find a younger Foreign Secretary.

  SIR O. Gaga!!!

  THE SECRETARY. I cannot afford to lose my job here. Do not force me to fight you with your own weapons in defence of my hardearned salary.

  THE WIDOW [to Sir O.] The best weapon is in your hands. You stole it from me. In my country he would now be dead at your feet with as many holes drilled through him as there are bullets in the clip.

  THE SECRETARY. In your country, señora, I might have fired first.

  THE WIDOW. What matter! In either case honor would be satisfied.

  THE SECRETARY. Honor! The stock excuse for making a corpse.

  THE JOURNALIST. A cadaver.

  THE WIDOW. Thank you.

  THE SECRETARY. A slovenly unhandsome corse. I am quoting Shakespear.

  THE WIDOW. Then Shakespear, whoever he may be, is no gentleman.

  THE SECRETARY. Judge: you hear what we have to contend with here. Stupidity upon stupidity. Geneva is expected to make a league of nations out of political blockheads.

  THE JUDGE. I must rule this point against you. These people are not stupid. Stupid people have nothing to say for themselves: these people have plenty to say for themselves. Take Sir Midlander here for example. If you tell me he is stupid the word has no meaning.

  SIR O. Thank you, my dear Judge, thank you. But for Heaven’s sake dont call me clever or I shall be defeated at the next election. I have the greatest respect for poetry and the fine arts and all that sort of thing; but please under
stand that I am not an intellectual. A plain Englishman doing my duty to my country according to my poor lights.

  THE JUDGE. Still, doing it with ability enough to have attained Cabinet rank in competition with hundreds of other successful and ambitious competitors.

  SIR O. I assure you I am not ambitious. I am not competitive. I happen to be fairly well off; but the money was made by my grandfather. Upon my honor I dont know how I got landed where I am. I am quite an ordinary chap really.