found one of the most eloquent arraignments of war in all literature. It is, remember, the Devil who is speaking:

I tell you that in the arts of life Man invests nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles; they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth. His heart is in his weapons.... Man measures his force by his destructiveness.... In the old chronicles you read of earthquakes and pestilences, and are told that these showed the power and majesty of God and the littleness of Man. Nowadays the chronicles describe battles. In a battle two bodies of men shoot at one another with bullets and explosive shells until one body runs away, when the others chase the fugitives on horseback and cut them to pieces as they fly. And this, the chronicle concludes, shows the greatness and majesty of empires, and the littleness of the vanquished. Over such battles the people run about the streets yelling with delight, and egg their Governments on to spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter, whilst the strongest ministers dare not spend an extra penny in the pound against the poverty and pestilence in which they themselves daily walk.... The plague, the famine, the earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and the crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough; something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more ingeniously destructive was needed; and that something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows and the executioner; of the sword and gun; above all, of justice, duty, patriotism, and all the other isms by which even those clever enough to be humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most destructive of all destroyers.

Three years before the war Shaw wrote a little satirical skit, "Press Cuttings",[2] which was deemed so dangerous to both Britain and Germany that the censors of both countries agreed in prohibiting its production on the stage. Since the British censor seemed to fear that the principal characters, "Balsquith" and "Mitchener", might be taken by the public as referring to certain well-known statesmen, Shaw offered to change the names to "Bones" and "Johnson." But even that concession would not satisfy the censor's scruples, so the play was never publicly put on the stage, though, since there was then no censorship of literature, it was published as a book. Here is a bit of the dialogue:

Balsquith—The Germans have laid down four more Dreadnoughts.

Mitchener—Then you must lay down twelve.

Balsquith—Oh, yes; it's easy to say that; but think of what they'll cost.

Mitchener—Think of what it would cost to be invaded by Germany and forced to pay an indemnity of five hundred millions....

Balsquith—After all, why should the Germans invade us?

Mitchener—Why shouldn't they? What else have their army to do? What else are they building a navy for?

Balsquith—Well, we never think of invading Germany.

Mitchener—Yes, we do. I have thought of nothing else for the last ten years. Say what you will, Balsquith, the Germans have never recognized, and until they get a stern lesson, they never will recognize, the plain fact that the interests of the British Empire are paramount, and that the command of the sea belongs by nature to England.

Balsquith—But if they wont recognize it, what can I do?

Mitchener—Shoot them down.

Balsquith—I cant shoot them down.

Mitchener—Yes, you can. You dont realize it; but if you fire a rifle into a German he drops just as surely as a rabbit does.

Balsquith—But dash it all, man, a rabbit hasn't got a rifle and a German has. Suppose he shoots you down.

Mitchener—Excuse me, Balsquith; but that consideration is what we call cowardice in the army. A soldier always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.

Balsquith—Oh, come! I like to hear you military people talking of cowardice. Why, you spend your lives in an ecstasy of terror of imaginary invasions. I don't believe you ever go to bed without looking under it for a burglar.

Mitchener—A very sensible precaution,

Balsquith. I always take it. And in consequence I've never been burgled.

Balsquith—Neither have I. Anyhow dont you taunt me with cowardice. I never look under my bed for a burglar. I'm not always looking under the nation's bed for an invader. And if it comes to fighting, Im quite willing to fight without being three to one.

Mitchener—These are the romantic ravings of a Jingo civilian, Balsquith. At least you'll not deny that the absolute command of the sea is essential to our security.

Balsquith—The absolute command of the sea is essential to the security of the principality of Monaco. But Monaco isn't going to get it.

Mitchener—And consequently Monaco enjoys no security. What a frightful thing! How do the inhabitants sleep with the possibility of invasion, of bombardment, continually present to their minds? Would you have our English slumbers broken in this way? Are we also to live without security?

Balsquith—Yes. Theres no such thing as security in the world; and there never can be as long as men are mortal. England will be secure when England is dead, just as the streets of London will be safe when there is no longer a man in her streets to be run over, or a vehicle to run over him. When you military chaps ask for security you are crying for the moon.

Mitchener—Let me tell you, Balsquith, that in these days of aeroplanes and Zeppelin airships, the question of the moon is becoming one of the greatest importance. It will be reached at no very distant date. Can you as an Englishman tamely contemplate the possibility of having to live under a German moon? The British flag must be planted there at all hazards.

The play ends with the establishment of universal military training and equal suffrage, thus doing away with a militarism that was both timorous and tyrannical, snobbish and inefficient, and at the same time making the nation truly democratic. It is characteristic of Shaw that recently, when the papers were discussing what sort of a monument should commemorate Edith Cavell, he interjected the unwelcome suggestion that the country could honor her best by enfranchising her sex.

There is ever something in Bernard Shaw that suggests the eighteenth century, the age of Swift and Voltaire and Doctor Johnson. On the credit side we must reckon lucidity, incisive wit, cleareyed logic, unashamed common sense, love of discussion and openness to new ideas, freedom from prejudice of race or class, humanitarian aspiration —in a word the Aufklärung. On the debit side some items must unhappily be listed also: doctrinaire intellectualism, inability to see