the army they rescued is busy in Cologne
imprisoning every German who does not salute a British officer; whilst
the government at home, asked whether it approves, replies that it
does not propose even to discontinue this Zabernism when the Peace is
concluded, but in effect looks forward to making Germans salute British
officers until the end of the world. That is what war makes of men and
women. It will wear off; and the worst it threatens is already proving
impracticable; but before the humble and contrite heart ceases to be
despised, the President and I, being of the same age, will be dotards.
In the meantime there is, for him, another history to write; for me,
another comedy to stage. Perhaps, after all, that is what wars are for,
and what historians and playwrights are for. If men will not learn until
their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, their own
for preference.

The Ephemeral Thrones and the Eternal Theatre

To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever Bastilles fall, the theatre
will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All Highest Hohenzollern
languishes in Holland, threatened with trial on a capital charge of
fighting for his country against England; Imperial Romanoff, said to
have perished miserably by a more summary method of murder, is perhaps
alive or perhaps dead: nobody cares more than if he had been a peasant;
the lord of Hellas is level with his lackeys in republican Switzerland;
Prime Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief have passed from a brief glory
as Solons and Caesars into failure and obscurity as closely on one
another's heels as the descendants of Banquo; but Euripides and
Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Moliere, Goethe and Ibsen remain fixed in
their everlasting seats.

How War muzzles the Dramatic Poet

As for myself, why, it may be asked, did I not write two plays about
the war instead of two pamphlets on it? The answer is significant. You
cannot make war on war and on your neighbor at the same time. War cannot
bear the terrible castigation of comedy, the ruthless light of laughter
that glares on the stage. When men are heroically dying for their
country, it is not the time to show their lovers and wives and fathers
and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of
boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the
electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriots, the lusts and
lies and rancors and bloodthirsts that lov