George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

The Next Phase
The present situation will not last. Although the newspaper
I read at breakfast this morning before writing these words
contains a calculation that no less than twenty-three wars
are at present being waged to confirm the peace, England is
no longer in khaki; and a violent reaction is setting in against
the crude theatrical fare of the four terrible years. Soon the
rents of theatres will once more be fixed on the assumption
that they cannot always be full, nor even on the average half
full week in and week out. Prices will change. The higher
drama will be at no greater disadvantage than it was before
the war; and it may benefit, first, by the fact that many of us
have been torn from the fools’ paradise in which the theatre
formerly traded, and thrust upon the sternest realities and
necessities until we have lost both faith in and patience with
the theatrical pretences that had no root either in reality or
necessity; second, by the startling change made by the war
in the distribution of income. It seems only the other day
that a millionaire was a man with œ50,000 a year. To-day,
when he has paid his income tax and super tax, and insured
his life for the amount of his death duties, he is lucky if his
net income is 10,000 pounds though his nominal property
remains the same. And this is the result of a Budget which is
called “a respite for the rich.” At the other end of the scale
millions of persons have had regular incomes for the first
time in their lives; and their men have been regularly clothed,
fed, lodged, and taught to make up their minds that certain
things have to be done, also for the first time in their lives.
Hundreds of thousands of women have been taken out of

---

35
GB Shaw
their domestic cages and tasted both discipline and indepen-
dence. The thoughtless and snobbish middle classes have been
pulled up short by the very unpleasant experience of being
ruined to an unprecedented extent. We have all had a tre-
mendous jolt; and although the widespread notion that the
shock of the war would automatically make a new heaven
and a new earth, and that the dog would never go back to
his vomit nor the sow to her wallowing in the mire, is al-
ready seen to be a delusion, yet we are far more conscious of
our condition than we were, and far less disposed to submit
to it. Revolution, lately only a sensational chapter in history
or a demagogic claptrap, is now a possibility so imminent
that hardly by trying to suppress it in other countries by
arms and defamation, and calling the process anti-Bolshe-
vism, can our Government stave it off at home.
Perhaps the most tragic figure of the day is the American
President who was once a historian. In those days it became
his task to tell us how, after that great war in America which
was more clearly than any other war of our time a war for an
idea, the conquerors, confronted with a heroic task of recon-
struction, turned recreant, and spent fifteen years in abusing
their victory under cover of pretending to accomplish the
task they were doing what they could to make impossible.
Alas! Hegel was right when he said that we learn from his-
tory that men never learn anything from history. With what
anguish of mind the President sees that we, the new con-
querors, forgetting everything we professed to fight for, are
sitting down with watering mouths to a good square meal of
ten years revenge upon and humiliation of our prostrate foe,
can only be guessed by those who know, as he does, how
hopeless is remonstrance, and how happy Lincoln was in
perishing from the earth before his inspired messages be-
came scraps of paper. He knows well that from the Peace
Conference will come, in spite of his utmost, no edict on
which he will be able, like Lincoln, to invoke “the consider-
ate judgment of mankind: and the gracious favor of Almighty
God.” He led his people to destroy the militarism of Zabern;
and 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

---

36
Heartbreak House
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 im-
practicable; 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.