s...
sharp and snappy. Then see the head of the delegation, and have it
understood that the affair is not to occupy more than fifteen minutes.

CAL. Very good, sir.

HAGEN. And stir up our Press Bureau. We must have strong, conservative
editorials this week... It's the crucial period. Our institutions are at
stake... the national honor is imperilled... order must be preserved at
any hazard... all that sort of thing.

CAL. Yes, sir... I understand.

HAGEN. Very good. That will be all.

CAL. Yes, sir.

[Exit, right.]

GER. You're putting the screws on, are you?

HAGEN. Humph! Yes. It's funny to hear these financial men... their
one idea in life has been to dominate... and now they cry out against
tyranny!

GER. I can imagine it.

HAGEN. Here's Plimpton, making speeches about American democracy! These
fellows have got so used to making pretenses that they actually deceive
themselves.

GER. I've noticed that you make a few yourself now.

HAGEN. Yes... don't I do it well? [Thoughtfully.] You know, Gerald,
pretenses are the greatest device that your civilization had to teach
me.

GER. Indeed?

HAGEN. We never made any pretenses in Nibelheim; and when I first met
you, your talk about virtue and morality and self-sacrifice was simply
incomprehensible to me. It seemed something quite apart from life. But
now I've come to perceive that this is what makes possible the system
under which you live.

GER. Explain yourself.

HAGEN. Here is this civilization... simply appalling in its vastness.
The countless millions of your people, the wealth you have piled up...
it seems like a huge bubble that may burst any minute. And the one
device by which it is all kept together... is pretense!

GER. Why do you think that?

HAGEN. Life, Gerald, is the survival of the strong. I care not if it be
in a jungle or in a city, it is the warfare of each against all. But in
the former case it's brute force, and in the latter it's power of mind.
And don't you see that the ingenious device which makes the animal of
the slums the docile slave of the man who can outwit him.. . is this
Morality... this absolutely sublimest invention, this most daring
conception that ever flashed across the mind of man?

GER. Oh, I see.

HAGEN. I used to wonder at it down there on the Bowery. The poor are
a thousand to your one, and the best that is might be theirs, if they
chose to take it; but there is Morality! They call it their virtue. And
so