The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dr. Jonathan (A Play), by Winston Churchill
[The Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British]

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Title: Dr. Jonathan (A Play)

Author: Winston Churchill

Last Updated: March 6, 2009
Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #5397]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DR. JONATHAN (A PLAY) ***

Produced by David Widger

DR. JONATHAN

By Winston Churchill

A Play in Three Acts

PREFACE

This play was written during the war. But owing to the fact that several
managers politely declined to produce it, it has not appeared on any
stage. Now, perhaps, its theme is more timely, more likely to receive
the attention it deserves, when the smoke of battle has somewhat
cleared. Even when the struggle with Germany and her allies was in
progress it was quite apparent to the discerning that the true issue
of the conflict was one quite familiar to American thought, of
self-determination. On returning from abroad toward the end of 1917
I ventured into print with the statement that the great war had every
aspect of a race with revolution. Subliminal desires, subliminal fears,
when they break down the censor of law, are apt to inspire fanatical
creeds, to wind about their victims the flaming flag of a false
martyrdom. Today it is on the knees of the gods whether the
insuppressible impulses for human freedom that come roaring up from the
subliminal chaos, fanned by hunger and hate, are to thrash themselves
out in anarchy and insanity, or to take an ordered, intelligent and
conscious course. Of the Twentieth Century, industrial democracy is
the watchword, even as political democracy was the watchword of the two
centuries that preceded it. Economic power is at last realized to be
political power. No man owns himself, no woman owns herself if the
individual is not economically free. Perhaps the most encouraging omen
of the day is the fact that many of our modern employers, and even our
modern financiers and bankers seem to be recognizing this truth, to
be growing aware of the danger to civilization of its continued
suppression. Educators and sociologists may suppl