we confidently look
forward to the time when the whole great structure will come down on our
heads. Yet after all that, when we are squirming under the debris, we
shall have no more faith or hope or satisfaction than we have now. We
shall crawl from under one cart-wheel straight under another.

The essence of tragedy, which is creative crisis, is that a man should
go through with his fate, and not dodge it and go bumping into an
accident. And the whole business of life, at the great critical periods
of mankind, is that men should accept and be one with their tragedy.
Therefore we should open our hearts. For one thing we should have a
People's Theatre. Perhaps it would help us in this hour of confusion
better than anything.

HERMITAGE,

June, 1919.

CHARACTERS

GERALD BARLOW.
MR. BARLOW (his father).
OLIVER TURTON.
JOB ARTHUR FREER.
WILLIE HOUGHTON.
ALFRED BREFFITT.
WILLIAM (a butler).
CLERKS, MINERS, etc.
ANABEL WRATH.
MRS. BARLOW.
WINIFRED BARLOW.
EVA (a maid).

TOUCH AND GO

ACT I

SCENE I

Sunday morning. Market-place of a large mining village in the
Midlands. A man addressing a small gang of colliers from the
foot of a stumpy memorial obelisk. Church bells heard.
Churchgoers passing along the outer pavements.

WILLIE HOUGHTON. What's the matter with you folks, as I've told you
before, and as I shall keep on telling you every now and again, though
it doesn't make a bit of difference, is that you've got no idea of
freedom whatsoever. I've lived in this blessed place for fifty years,
and I've never seen the spark of an idea, nor of any response to an
idea, come out of a single one of you, all the time. I don't know what
it is with colliers--whether it's spending so much time in the bowels
of the earth--but they never seem to be able to get their thoughts above
their bellies. If you've got plenty to eat and drink, and a bit over to
keep the missis quiet, you're satisfied. I never saw such a satisfied
bloomin' lot in my life as you Barlow & Wasall's men are, really. Of
course you can growse as well as anybody, and you do growse. But you
don't do anything else. You're stuck in a sort of mud of contentment,
and you feel yourselves sinking, but you make no efforts to get out. You
bleat a bit, like sheep in a bog--but you like it, you know. You like
sinking in--you don't have to stand on your own feet then.