George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

The Yahoo and the Angry Ape
Contemplating this picture of a state of mankind so recent
that no denial of its truth is possible, one understands
Shakespeare comparing Man to an angry ape, Swift describ-
ing him as a Yahoo rebuked by the superior virtue of the
horse, and Wellington declaring that the British can behave
themselves neither in victory nor defeat. Yet none of the three
had seen war as we have seen it. Shakespeare blamed great
men, saying that “Could great men thunder as Jove himself
does, Jove would ne’er be quiet; for every pelting petty of-
ficer would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thun-
der.” What would Shakespeare have said if he had seen some-
thing far more destructive than thunder in the hand of every
village laborer, and found on the Messines Ridge the craters
of the nineteen volcanoes that were let loose there at the
touch of a finger that might have been a child’s finger with-
out the result being a whit less ruinous? Shakespeare may
have seen a Stratford cottage struck by one of Jove’s thunder-
bolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted thatch and
clear away the bits of the broken chimney. What would he
have said if he had seen Ypres as it is now, or returned to
Stratford, as French peasants are returning to their homes
to-day, to find the old familiar signpost inscribed “To
Stratford, 1 mile,” and at the end of the mile nothing but
some holes in the ground and a fragment of a broken churn
here and there? Would not the spectacle of the angry ape
endowed with powers of destruction that Jove never pre-
tended to, have beggared even his command of words?
And yet, what is there to say except that war puts a strain
on human nature that breaks down the better half of it, and
makes the worse half a diabolical virtue? Better, for us if it
broke it down altogether, for then the warlike way out of our
difficulties would be barred to us, and we should take greater
care not to get into them. In truth, it is, as Byron said, “not
difficult to die,” and enormously difficult to live: that ex-
plains why, at bottom, peace is not only better than war, but
infinitely more arduous. Did any hero of the war face the
glorious risk of death more bravely than the traitor Bolo faced
the ignominious certainty of it? Bolo taught us all how to
die: can we say that he taught us all how to live? Hardly a
week passes now without some soldier who braved death in
the field so recklessly that he was decorated or specially com-

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26
Heartbreak House
mended for it, being haled before our magistrates for having
failed to resist the paltriest temptations of peace, with no
better excuse than the old one that “a man must live.” Strange
that one who, sooner than do honest work, will sell his honor
for a bottle of wine, a visit to the theatre, and an hour with a
strange woman, all obtained by passing a worthless cheque,
could yet stake his life on the most desperate chances of the
battle-field! Does it not seem as if, after all, the glory of death
were cheaper than the glory of life? If it is not easier to attain,
why do so many more men attain it? At all events it is clear
that the kingdom of the Prince of Peace has not yet become
the kingdom of this world. His attempts at invasion have been
resisted far more fiercely than the Kaiser’s. Successful as that
resistance has been, it has piled up a sort of National Debt
that is not the less oppressive because we have no figures for it
and do not intend to pay it. A blockade that cuts off “the grace
of our Lord” is in the long run less bearable than the block-
ades which merely cut off raw materials; and against that block-
ade our Armada is impotent. In the blockader’s house, he has
assured us, there are many mansions; but I am afraid they do
not include either Heartbreak House or Horseback Hall.