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190 George Bernard Shaw
Mrs. Baines. Barbara: Lord Saxmundham gives us
the money to stop drinking to take his own business
from him.
Undershaft. I also, Mrs. Baines, may claim a little
disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the
widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces
with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite! the oceans of
blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just
cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants forced,
women and men, to till their fields under the fire of op
posing armies on pain of starvation ! the bad blood of the
fierce cowards at home who egg on others to fight for
the gratification of national vanity! All this makes
money for me : I am never richer, never busier than when
the papers are full of it. Well, it is your work to preach
peace on earth and good will to men. Every convert
you make is a vote against war. Yet I give you this
money to hasten my own commercial ruin.
Barbara. Drunkenness and Murder! My God, why
hast thou forsaked me?
However, Barbara s indignation does not last
very long, any more than that of her aristocratic
mother, Lady Britomart, who has no use for her
plebeian husband except when she needs his
money. Similarly Stephen, her son, has become
converted, like Barbara, not to the Glory Halle
lujah of the Salvation Army but to the power
of money and cannon. Likewise the rest of the
family, including the Greek Scholar Cusins, Bar
bara s suitor.
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