e hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and
join the Conservative Party.

BARBARA. And will he be the better for that?

UNDERSHAFT. You know he will. Don't be a hypocrite, Barbara. He
will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better
behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That
will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter,
chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to
kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it: knee drill,
I think you call it. It is cheap work converting starving men
with a Bible in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. I
will undertake to convert West Ham to Mahometanism on the same
terms. Try your hand on my men: their souls are hungry because
their bodies are full.

BARBARA. And leave the east end to starve?

UNDERSHAFT [his energetic tone dropping into one of bitter and
brooding remembrance] I was an east ender. I moralized and
starved until one day I swore that I would be a fullfed free man
at all costs--that nothing should stop me except a bullet,
neither reason nor morals nor the lives of other men. I said
"Thou shalt starve ere I starve"; and with that word I became
free and great. I was a dangerous man until I had my will: now I
am a useful, beneficent, kindly person. That is the history of
most self-made millionaires, I fancy. When it is the history of
every Englishman we shall have an England worth living in.

LADY BRITOMART. Stop making speeches, Andrew. This is not the
place for them.

UNDERSHAFT [punctured] My dear: I have no other means of
conveying my ideas.

LADY BRITOMART. Your ideas are nonsense. You got oil because you
were selfish and unscrupulous.

UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. I had the strongest scruples about
poverty and starvation. Your moralists are quite unscrupulous
about both: they make virtues of them. I had rather be a thief
than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave. I don't
want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then,
by Heaven, I'll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate
poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever. And
let me tell you this. Poverty and slavery have stood up for
centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not
stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them: don't reason
with them. Kill them.

BARBARA. Killing. Is that your remedy for everything?

UNDERSHAFT. It is the final test of conv