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that I dislike you, in spite of your continual attempts to discourage and depress me. But you have a mind like a looking-glass. You are very clear and smooth and lucid as to what is standing in front of you. But you have no foresight and no hindsight. You have no vision and no memory. You have no continuity; and a man without continuity can have neither conscience nor honor from one day to another. The result is that you have always been a damned bad minister; and you have sometimes been a damned bad friend. Now you can answer Barnabas’s question and take it out of me to your heart’s content. He asked you was I fit to govern England. Lubin Recovering himself. After what has just passed I sincerely wish I could honestly say yes, Burge. But it seems to me that you have condemned yourself out of your own mouth. You represent something which has had far too much influence and popularity in this country since Joseph Chamberlain set the fashion; and that is mere energy without intellect and without knowledge. Your mind is not a trained mind: it has not been stored with the best information, nor cultivated by intercourse with educated minds at any of our great seats of learning. As I happen to have enjoyed that advantage, it follows that you do not understand my mind. Candidly, I think that disqualifies you. The peace found out your weaknesses. Burge Oh! What did it find out in you? Lubin You and your newspaper confederates took the peace out of my hands. The peace did not find me out because it did not find me in. Franklyn Come! Confess, both of you! You were only flies on the wheel. The war went England’s way; but the peace went its own way, and not England’s way nor any of the ways you had so glibly appointed for it. Your peace treaty was a scrap of paper before the ink dried on it. The statesmen of Europe were incapable of governing Europe. What they needed was a couple of hundred years training and experience: what they had actually had was a few years at the bar or in a countinghouse or on the grouse moors and golf courses. And now we are waiting, with monster cannons trained on every city and seaport, and huge aeroplanes ready to spring into the air and drop bombs every one of which will obliterate a whole street, and poison gases that will strike multitudes dead with a breath, until one of you gentlemen rises in his helplessness to tell us, who are as helpless as himself, that we are at war again. Conrad Aha! What consolation will it be for us then that you two are able to tell off one another’s defects so cleverly in your afternoon chat? Burge Angrily. If you come to that, what consolation will it be that you two can sit there and tell both of us off? you, who have had no responsibility! you, who haven’t lifted a finger, as far as I know, to help us through this awful crisis which has left me ten years older than my proper age! Can you tell me a single thing you did to help us during the whole infernal business? Conrad We’re not blaming you: you hadn’t lived long enough. No more had we. Can’t you see that threescore-and-ten, though it may be long enough for a very crude sort of village life, isn’t long enough for a complicated civilization like ours? Flinders Petrie has counted nine attempts at civilization made by people exactly like us; and every one of them failed just as ours is failing. They failed because the citizens and statesmen died of old age or overeating before they had grown out of schoolboy games and savage sports and cigars and champagne. The signs of the end are always the same: Democracy, Socialism, and Votes for Women. We shall go to smash within the lifetime of men now living unless we recognize that we must live longer. Lubin I am glad you agree with me that Socialism and Votes for Women are signs of decay. Franklyn Not at all: they are only the difficulties that overtax your capacity. If you cannot organize Socialism you cannot organize civilized life; and you will relapse into barbarism accordingly. Savvy Hear, hear! Burge A useful point. We cannot put back the clock. Haslam I can. I’ve often done it. Lubin Tut tut! My dear Burge: what are you dreaming of? Mr. Barnabas: I am a very patient man. But will you tell me what earthly use or interest there is in a conclusion that cannot be realized? I grant you that if we could live three hundred years we should all be, perhaps wiser, certainly older. You will grant me in return, I hope, that if the sky fell we should all catch larks. Franklyn Your turn now, Conrad. Go ahead. Conrad I don’t think it’s any good. I don’t think they want to live longer than usual. Lubin Although I am a mere child of 69, I am old enough to have lost the habit of crying for the moon. Burge Have you discovered the elixir of life or have you not? If not, I agree with Lubin that you are wasting our time. Conrad Is your time of any value? Burge Unable to believe his ears. My time of any value! What do you mean? Lubin Smiling comfortably. From your high scientific point of view, I daresay, none whatever, Professor. In any case I think a little perfectly idle discussion would do Burge good. After all, we might as well hear about the elixir of life as read novels, or whatever Burge does when he is not playing golf on Walton Heath. What is your elixir, Dr. Barnabas? Lemons? Sour milk? Or what is the latest? Burge We were just beginning to talk seriously; and now you snatch at the chance of talking rot. He rises. Good evening. He turns to