By Winston Churchill

A Play in Three Acts

PREFACE

This play was written during the war. But owing to the fact that several
managers politely declined to produce it, it has not appeared on any
stage. Now, perhaps, its theme is more timely, more likely to receive
the attention it deserves, when the smoke of battle has somewhat cleared.
Even when the struggle with Germany and her allies was in progress it was
quite apparent to the discerning that the true issue of the conflict was
one quite familiar to American thought, of self-determination. On
returning from abroad toward the end of 1917 I ventured into print with
the statement that the great war had every aspect of a race with
revolution. Subliminal desires, subliminal fears, when they break down
the censor of law, are apt to inspire fanatical creeds, to wind about
their victims the flaming flag of a false martyrdom. Today it is on the
knees of the gods whether the insuppressible impulses for human freedom
that come roaring up from the subliminal chaos, fanned by hunger and
hate, are to thrash themselves out in anarchy and insanity, or to take an
ordered, intelligent and conscious course. Of the Twentieth Century,
industrial democracy is the watchword, even as political democracy was
the watchword of the two centuries that preceded it. Economic power is
at last realized to be political power. No man owns himself, no woman
owns herself if the individual is not economically free. Perhaps the
most encouraging omen of the day is the fact that many of our modern
employers, and even our modern financiers and bankers seem to be
recognizing this truth, to be growing aware of the danger to civilization
of its continued suppression. Educators and sociologists may supply the
theories; but by experiment, by trial and error,--yes, and by prayer,
--the solution must be found in the practical domain of industry.

DR. JONATHAN

ACT I

SCENE:
The library of ASHER PINDAR'S house in Foxon Falls, a New England
village of some three thousand souls, over the destinies of which
the Pindars for three generations have presided. It is a large,
dignified room, built early in the nineteenth century, with white
doors and gloss woodwork. At the rear of the stage,--which is the
front of the house,--are three high windows with small, square panes
of glass, and embrasures into which are fitted white inside
shutters. These windows reach to within a fo