Review of Reviews, 20/2/06. 



Impressions of the Theatre. 



167 



organisations like the Salvation Army are justified in 

 accepting subscriptions from brewers and ordnance 

 makers. In other words — are religious societies 

 justified in adopting the famous phrase with which 

 the Roman Emperor silenced the objection of his 

 heir to an unsavoury impost : " Non Olet " ? To 

 Major Barbara the money does smell. It stinks of 

 whiskey, and it reeks with blood. She will have 

 none of it. But the Salvation Army, harassed with 

 the dread of having to turn away thousands of starv- 

 ing unemployed from its shelters, thinks otherwise. 

 It accepts with jubilation and grateful hallelujahs 

 ^5000 from Blodgett the distiller — a timely hint 

 upon which Dewar will do well to act — and another 

 ^5000 from the millionaire manufacturer of engines 

 of war. To Major Barbara this was as the sin of 

 Judas. He sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. 

 The Salvation Army was selling itself for ten thou- 

 sand pieces of gold. She will have nothing more 

 to do with the apostate society. Tearing off her 

 badge, she resigns her commission. And while the 

 rest of her comrades march off with jubilant beat of 

 drum to a thanksgiving service for the ten thousand 

 pounds, Major Barbara cries in bitter and unavail- 

 ing grief : " My God ! my God ! why hast Thou for- 

 saken me?" And, as she lies sobbing in her despair, 

 Bill Walker, a superior kind of Bill Sykes, whom 

 she has almost succeeded in converting before the 

 fatal subscription, approaches stealthily and bawls 

 in her ear, " What price Salvation now ?" 



That is the clou of the whole play. Everything 

 else is only prologue and epilogue. Yet, so strangely 

 constituted and conventional are some people, that 

 they actually deluged the papers with correspon- 

 dence insisting that these two phrases should be de- 

 leted ! But these two phrases are the whole essence 

 of the play. Tf they were struck out there would be 

 no play — only a miscellaneous concatenation of more 

 or less amusing observations by Mr. Shaw in various 

 disguises. It is a marvellous instance of Mr. Shaw's 

 mastery of his art that he was able to present this 

 spectacle of a soul's desolation, when the founda- 

 tions of the earth seem to be removed, amid all the 

 farcical comicalities of the rest of his characters. In 

 the hands of anvbody else the sense of jar and of in- 

 congruity would have been intolerable. Shakespeare 

 no doubt contrived to introduce interludes of clown- 

 ing even in the midst of the tragic solemnity of 

 "Hamlet." But Mr. Shaw, outdoing Shakespeare, 

 contrives successfully to introduce an interlude of 

 tragedy into the midst of the brisk buffoonery and 

 smart comedv which form the staple of the play. 



Major Barbara is the daughter of one Undershaft. 

 who has amassed millions and acquired the control 

 of the destinies of empires by the manufacture of 

 high explosives. He is Armstrong and Whitworth 

 and Hiram Maxim and Whitehead all rolled into 

 one. He is the supreme incarnation of the mate 

 rialistic, cynical spirit of the age. More, even, than 

 Broadbent in " John Bull's Other Island " does he 



embody the accepted ideal of the successful Jingo 

 Philistine who is " unashamed." He is a model 

 employer devoted to business and to the true gospel 

 of an armourer, which is inspired by Nietzsche. To 

 him meekness is weakness, might is right. To be 

 poor is the worst of crimes, and the only morality is 

 the will to trample all under your feet who stand in 

 your way. The type is exaggerated to caricature, 

 and Bernard Shaw sacrifices the force of his argu- 

 ments by making them farcical. 



Major Barbara is one of two daughters of this 

 Nietzsehian servant of Mars and Vulcan. Her sister 

 is a mere pretty Society doll, her mother a manag- 

 ing, domineering lady of good family, and her 

 brother a conventional, well-dressed commonplace 

 youth, who serves as the butt of his father's sarcasm. 

 Her sister is engaged to a good-natured Johnnie 

 Dontcherknow, a Society zany. Out of this family 

 milieu Barbara has been rescued by the Salvation 

 Army. She becomes a major, and enters into the 

 new life. And the first clear good point gained is 

 that no one who sees the play can help feeling that 

 when Miss Barbara Undershaft left her drawing- 

 room to> become Major Barbara of the Salvation 

 Army she did unquestionably rise in the scale of 

 being. She found her soul. From being a mere 

 decorative, animated appendage to the furniture of 

 her mother's drawing-room, she became a living, lov- 

 ing, useful woman, full of faith in God and love to 

 man, capable of all manner of self-sacrifice and noble 

 enthusiasm. And what the Salvation Army did for 

 Miss Undershaft it did in a more or less degree for 

 Mrs. Baines and Jenny Hill. It lifted these deli- 

 cately-nurtured beings out of their narrow, selfish 

 environment ; it put them into cuickening contact 

 with the bleeding heart of humanity ; it gave them 

 an object in life, and endowed them with strength 

 and patience for their task. The inexhaustible good 

 temper, the quick forgiveness of injuries, the ready 

 persuasive pertinacity that refuses to be denied, the 

 passionate zeal for souls which knows no distinction 

 between rich and poor, high or low — all these dis- 

 tinctive features of the Salvation Army were por- 

 trayed to the life at the Court Theatre. As one of 

 the characters said, " Whatever you may say against 

 the Salvation Army, you cannot deny it is religion.'' 

 Some see, in the wonderful second act — the one 

 real act in the play —only a demonstration of tli<- 

 futility of the operations of the Salvation Army. 

 Snobby Price, a typical out-of-work, who always 

 does his duty by his class by doing as little work as 

 possible himself in order that there may be more for 

 his mates, who feigns conversion in the morning and 

 steals a sovereign in the afternoon, is one of their 

 failures. So to a certain extent is Rummy Mitchens, 

 a respectable woman, who pretends to be a reprobate 

 in order that she may secure relief. The Army fail 

 with the Free-thinker who swears by Thomas Paine 

 and Charles Bradlaugh, and their drummer is an ad- 

 mitted fraud. He is a Greek professor who has 



