"Undershafts"
Maoriland Worker, Volume 5, Issue 188, 9 September 1914, Page 5
About this newspaper
" Undershafts"
Undershafte ie an armaments manufacturer. Hβ regards riches as the result of trade in death and destruction, , as infinitely preferable to poverty, which he alleges is the most hideous' and! detestable crime. "Think of my business! Think of the widows and orphans! The men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite! The oceans of blood, not a drop of which is shed in a really just cause! The ravaged crops! The peaceful peasants forced, vornen and! men, .to till their fields under the fire of opposing armies on pain of starvation 1 The bad blood of the fierce little cowards at home who egg on others to fight (or the gratification of their national vanity! All this makes money for mc: 1 am never richer, never busier than when the jKipers are full of it." / * * * "I am the government of your counr try. I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half-a-dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in, a foolish gabble shop can govern TJndershaft and Lazarus ? No, my friend; you will do what pays us. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn't. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on, those measures. IWhen I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my Want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down you will cal> out the polioe and the military, and in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country? Be off with you, my boy, and play with, your caucuses and leading articles and historio parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting-house to pay the piper »nd call tho tune." * * * . "What is the true faith of an armourer? To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or- principles: to aristocrat and republican to Nihiliet and Tsar, to capitalist and Social- Isi, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman; to black man, white man, and yellow man; to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all beliefs, all follies, all causes and All crimes. The first Undershaft wrote up on his shop: "If Cod gave the hand, let not man wlthould the sword. The second wrote up: 'All have the right to fight—none have the right to |udge.' The third wrote up: 'To Man. the weapon,- to Heaven the vlotory. The fourth had no literary turn, so he did not write anything; but he sold cannon to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third. The fifth wrote up: ■Peaoe shall not prevail save with a iword In her hand. . The sixth, my master, was the best of all. Hβ wrote up: 'Nothing Is ever done In the world until men are prepared to kill one another If It Is not done' After that bhere wag nothing left for the seventh to say. So he wrote up simply :'Un- Ishamed. , " * # * "What do we do -here when we spend years of work and thought and thousands of pounds of solid cash on a new gun on an aerial battleship that turns out just a hairsbreadth wrong after all? Scrap it. Scrap it without wasting another hour or another pound on it. Well, you have made for your'«elf something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it end get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and 'its old political constitutions. What's the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics It is working at a loss that brings it Dearer bankruptcy every year." « * * * "Poverty is the worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it; all. the other dishonours are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of (.11 who come within sight, smell or feound of it. What you call crime is jiothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then. iWhat do they matter? They are only the illnesses and accidents of life. There are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are trillions of poor people, abject people, flirty people, ill-fed, ill-clothed people. They ppis<>.ni us morally and physically;
PROM BERNARD SHAW'S "MAJOR BARBARA-"
they kill the happiness of society; they force us to do away with our own liberty and to organise unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us dawn into their abyss. Only fools fear crime; we all fear poverty." * * * "Leave it to the poor to pretend that poverty is a blessing: Leave it to the coward to make a rcligiom of his cowardice- by preaching humility."
