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Page 54
CUSINS. My good Machiavelli, I shall certainly write something up
on the wall; only, as I shall write it in Greek, you won't be
able to read it. But as to your Armorer's faith, if I take my
neck out of the noose of my own morality I am not going to put it
into the noose of yours. I shall sell cannons to whom I please
and refuse them to whom I please. So there!
UNDERSHAFT. From the moment when you become Andrew Undershaft,
you will never do as you please again. Don't come here lusting
for power, young man.
CUSINS. If power were my aim I should not come here for it.
YOU have no power.
UNDERSHAFT. None of my own, certainly.
CUSINS. I have more power than you, more will. You do not drive
this place: it drives you. And what drives the place?
UNDERSHAFT [enigmatically] A will of which I am a part.
BARBARA [startled] Father! Do you know what you are saying; or
are you laying a snare for my soul?
CUSINS. Don't listen to his metaphysics, Barbara. The place is
driven by the most rascally part of society, the money hunters,
the pleasure hunters, the military promotion hunters; and he is
their slave.
UNDERSHAFT. Not necessarily. Remember the Armorer's Faith. I will
take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If
you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my
weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make
cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction. Bah! You tire me,
Euripides, with your morality mongering. Ask Barbara: SHE
understands. [He suddenly takes Barbara's hands, and looks
powerfully into her eyes]. Tell him, my love, what power really
means.
BARBARA [hypnotized] Before I joined the Salvation Army, I was in
my own power; and the consequence was that I never knew what to
do with myself. When I joined it, I had not time enough for all
the things I had to do.
UNDERSHAFT [approvingly] Just so. And why was that, do you
suppose?
BARBARA. Yesterday I should have said, because I was in the power
of God. [She resumes her self-possession, withdrawing her hands
from his with a power equal to his own]. But you came and showed
me that I was in the power of Bodger and Undershaft. Today I
feel--oh! how can I put it into words? Sarah: do you remember the
earthquake at Cannes, when we were little children?--how little
the surprise of the first shock mattered compared to the dread
and horror of waiting for the second? That is how I feel in this
place today. I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without
a word of warning it reeled and crumbled under me. I was safe
with an infinite wisdom watching me, an army marching to
Salvation with me; and in a moment, at a stroke of your pen in a
cheque book, I stood alone; and the heavens were empty. That was
the first shock of the earthquake: I am waiting for the second.
UNDERSHAFT. Come, come, my daughter! Don't make too much of your
little tinpot tragedy. What do we do here when we spend years of
work and thought and thousands of pounds of solid cash on a new
gun or an aerial battleship that turns out just a hairsbreadth
wrong after all? Scrap it. Scrap it without wasting another hour
or another pound on it. Well, you have made for yourself
something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It
doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that
does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It
scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap
its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions
and its old political constitutions. What's the result? In
machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and
politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy
every year. Don't persist in that folly. If your old religion
broke down yesterday, get a newer and a better one for tomorrow.
BARBARA. Oh how gladly I would take a better one to my soul! But
you offer me a worse one. [Turning on him with sudden vehemence].
Justify yourself: show me some light through the darkness of this
dreadful place, with its beautifully clean workshops, and
respectable workmen, and model homes.
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