ou did it, whip
in hand: you flogged women for teaching children to read.

STRAMMFEST. To read sedition. To read Karl Marx.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Pshaw! How could they learn to read the Bible without
learning to read Karl Marx? Why do you not stand to your guns and
justify what you did, instead of making silly excuses? Do you suppose
I think flogging a woman worse than flogging a man? I, who am a woman
myself!

STRAMMFEST. I am at a loss to understand your Imperial Highness. You
seem to me to contradict yourself.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Nonsense! I say that if the people cannot govern
themselves, they must be governed by somebody. If they will not do their
duty without being half forced and half humbugged, somebody must force
them and humbug them. Some energetic and capable minority must always
be in power. Well, I am on the side of the energetic minority whose
principles I agree with. The Revolution is as cruel as we were; but its
aims are my aims. Therefore I stand for the Revolution.

STRAMMFEST. You do not know what you are saying. This is pure
Bolshevism. Are you, the daughter of a Panjandrum, a Bolshevist?

THE GRAND DUCHESS. I am anything that will make the world less like a
prison and more like a circus.

STRAMMFEST. Ah! You still want to be a circus star.

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Yes, and be billed as the Bolshevik Empress. Nothing
shall stop me. You have your orders, General Strammfest: save the
Revolution.

STRAMMFEST. What Revolution? Which Revolution? No two of your rabble of
revolutionists mean the same thing by the Revolution What can save a mob
in which every man is rushing in a different direction?

THE GRAND DUCHESS. I will tell you. The war can save it.

STRAMMFEST. The war?

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Yes, the war. Only a great common danger and a great
common duty can unite us and weld these wrangling factions into a solid
commonwealth.

STRAMMFEST. Bravo! War sets everything right: I have always said so. But
what is a united people without a united army? And what can I do? I am
only a soldier. I cannot make speeches: I have won no victories: they
will not rally to my call [again he sinks into his chair with his former
gesture of discouragement].

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Are you sure they will not rally to mine?

STRAMMFEST. Oh, if only you were a man and a soldier!

THE GRAND DUCHESS. Suppose I find you a man and a soldier?

STRAMMFEST [rising in a fury]. Ah! the scoundrel you eloped with! You
think