tic that one shudders at the thought of their
being entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God,
much less to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.

BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.

FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish
it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children
slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at
war again.

CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that
the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be
solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just
beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their
own government.

LUBIN. Quite an interesting idea, Doctor. Extravagant. Fantastic. But
quite interesting. When I was young I used to feel my human limitations
very acutely.

BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not
been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power
above us.

CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.

LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had
many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.

FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies--Dilke's, for
instance--which revealed the truth about them?

LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr
Barnabas.

FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by
a little woman who knew her own mind?

SAVVY. Hear, hear!

LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?

FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the
relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their
tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her
death Europe became a hell.

SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and
regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is
only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting
the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.

FRANKLYN. The Kaiser felt like that. Did he come out all right?

SURGE. Well, let us be fair, even to the Kaiser. Let us be fair.

FRANKLYN. Were you fair to him when you won an election on the program
of hanging him?

SURGE. Stuff! I am the last man alive to hang anybody; b