owing in it". Truly my play must be more
needed than I knew; and yet I thought I knew how little the others know.

Do not suppose, however, that the consternation of the Press reflects
any consternation among the general public. Anybody can upset the
theatre critics, in a turn of the wrist, by substituting for the
romantic commonplaces of the stage the moral commonplaces of the pulpit,
platform, or the library. Play Mrs Warren's Profession to an audience
of clerical members of the Christian Social Union and of women well
experienced in Rescue, Temperance, and Girls' Club work, and no moral
panic will arise; every man and woman present will know that as long
as poverty makes virtue hideous and the spare pocket-money of rich
bachelordom makes vice dazzling, their daily hand-to-hand fight against
prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and scanty alms,
will be a losing one. There was a time when they were able to urge that
though "the white-lead factory where Anne Jane was poisoned" may be a
far more terrible place than Mrs Warren's house, yet hell is still more
dreadful. Nowadays they no longer believe in hell; and the girls among
whom they are working know that they do not believe in it, and would
laugh at them if they did. So well have the rescuers learnt that Mrs
Warren's defence of herself and indictment of society is the thing that
most needs saying, that those who know me personally reproach me, not
for writing this play, but for wasting my energies on "pleasant
plays" for the amusement of frivolous people, when I can build up such
excellent stage sermons on their own work. Mrs Warren's Profession is
the one play of mine which I could submit to a censorship without doubt
of the result; only, it must not be the censorship of the minor theatre
critic, nor of an innocent court official like the Lord Chamberlain's
Examiner, much less of people who consciously profit by Mrs Warren's
profession, or who personally make use of it, or who hold the widely
whispered view that it is an indispensable safety-valve for the
protection of domestic virtue, or, above all, who are smitten with a
sentimental affection for our fallen sister, and would "take her up
tenderly, lift her with care, fashioned so slenderly, young, and SO
fair." Nor am I prepared to accept the verdict of the medical gentlemen
who would compulsorily sanitate and register Mrs Warren, whilst leaving
Mrs Warren's patrons, especially her military patrons, fr