The Essential G. B. Shaw: Celebrated Plays, Novels, Personal Letters, Essays & Articles. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

it, and two candles in silver candlesticks, the light of which, being brighter than the lanterns, cast strong double shadows from a group of standing figures about the table. The surrounding space was crowded with chairs, occupied chiefly by ladies. Behind them, along the wall, stood a row of men, among whom was Lucian Webber. All were staring at Cashel Byron, who was making a speech to some bearded and spectacled gentlemen at the table. Lydia, who had never before seen him either in evening dress or quite at his ease, was astonished at his bearing. His eyes were sparkling, his confidence overbore the company, and his rough voice created the silence it broke. He was in high goodhumor, and marked his periods by the swing of his extended left arm, while he held his right hand close to his body and occasionally pointed his remarks by slyly wagging his forefinger.

      “ — executive power,” he was saying as Lydia entered. “That’s a very good expression, gentlemen, and one that I can tell you a lot about. We have been told that if we want to civilize our neighbors we must do it mainly by the example of our own lives, by each becoming a living illustration of the highest culture we know. But what I ask is, how is anybody to know that you’re an illustration of culture. You can’t go about like a sandwich man with a label on your back to tell all the fine notions you have in your head; and you may be sure no person will consider your mere appearance preferable to his own. You want an executive power; that’s what you want. Suppose you walked along the street and saw a man beating a woman, and setting a bad example to the roughs. Well, you would be bound to set a good example to them; and, if you’re men, you’d like to save the woman; but you couldn’t do it by merely living; for that would be setting the bad example of passing on and leaving the poor creature to be beaten. What is it that you need to know then, in order to act up to your fine ideas? Why, you want to know how to hit him, when to hit him, and where to hit him; and then you want the nerve to go in and do it. That’s executive power; and that’s what’s wanted worse than sitting down and thinking how good you are, which is what this gentleman’s teaching comes to after all. Don’t you see? You want executive power to set an example. If you leave all that to the roughs, it’s their example that will spread, and not yours. And look at the politics of it. We’ve heard a good deal about the French tonight. Well, they’ve got executive power. They know how to make a barricade, and how to fight behind it when they’ve made it. What’s the result? Why, the French, if they only knew what they wanted, could have it tomorrow for the asking — more’s the pity that they don’t know. In this country we can do nothing; and if the lords and the landlords, or any other collection of nobs, were to drive us into the sea, what could we do but go? There’s a gentleman laughing at me for saying that; but I ask him what would he do if the police or the soldiers came this evening and told him to turn out of his comfortable house into the Thames? Tell ’em he wouldn’t vote for their employers at the next election, perhaps? Or, if that didn’t stop them, tell ’em that he’d ask his friends to do the same? That’s a pretty executive power! No, gentlemen. Don’t let yourself be deceived by people that have staked their money against you. The first thing to learn is how to fight. There’s no use in buying books and pictures unless you know how to keep them and your own head as well. If that gentleman that laughed know how to fight, and his neighbors all knew how to fight too, he wouldn’t need to fear police, nor soldiers, nor Russians, nor Prussians, nor any of the millions of men that may be let loose on him any day of the week, safe though he thinks himself. But, says you, let’s have a division of labor. Let’s not fight for ourselves, but pay other men to fight for us. That shows how some people, when they get hold of an idea, will work it to that foolish length that it’s wearisome to listen to them. Fighting is the power of self-preservation; another man can’t do it for you. You might as well divide the labor of eating your dinner, and pay one fellow to take the beef, another the beer, and a third the potatoes. But let us put it for the sake of argument that you do pay others to fight for you. Suppose some one else pays them higher, and they fight a cross, or turn openly against you! You’d have only yourself to blame for giving the executive power to money. And so long as the executive power is money the poor will be kept out of their corner and fouled against the ropes; whereas, by what I understand, the German professor wants them to have their rights. Therefore I say that a man’s first duty is to learn to fight. If he can’t do that he can’t set an example; he can’t stand up for his own rights or his neighbors’; he can’t keep himself in bodily health; and if he sees the weak illused by the strong, the most he can do is to sneak away and tell the nearest policeman, who most likely won’t turn up until the worst of the mischief is done. Coming to this lady’s drawingroom, and making an illustration of himself, won’t make him feel like a man after that. Let me be understood, though, gentlemen: I don’t intend that you should take everything I say too exactly — too literally, as it were. If you see a man beating a woman, I think you should interfere on principle. But don’t expect to be thanked by her for it; and keep your eye on her; don’t let her get behind you. As for him, just give him a good one and go away. Never stay to get yourself into a street fight; for it’s low, and generally turns out badly for all parties. However, that’s only a bit of practical advice. It doesn’t alter the great principle that you should get an executive power. When you get that, you’ll have courage in you; and, what’s more, your courage will be of some use to you. For though you may have courage by nature, still, if you haven’t executive power as well, your courage will only lead you to stand up to be beaten by men that have both courage and executive power; and what good does that do you? People say that you’re a game fellow; but they won’t find the stakes for you unless you can win them. You’d far better put your game in your pocket, and throw up the sponge while you can see to do it.

      “Now, on this subject of game, I’ve something to say that will ease the professor’s mind on a point that he seemed anxious about. I am no musician; but I’ll just show you how a man that understands one art understands every art. I made out from the gentleman’s remarks that there is a man in the musical line named Wagner, who is what you might call a game sort of composer; and that the musical fancy, though they can’t deny that his tunes are firstrate, and that, so to speak, he wins his fights, yet they try to make out that he wins them in an outlandish way, and that he has no real science. Now I tell the gentleman not to mind such talk. As I have just shown you, his game wouldn’t be any use to him without science. He might have beaten a few second-raters with a rush while he was young; but he wouldn’t have lasted out as he has done unless he was clever as well. You will find that those that run him down are either jealous, or they are old stagers that are not used to his style, and think that anything new must be bad. Just wait a bit, and, take my word for it, they’ll turn right round and swear that his style isn’t new at all, and that he stole it from some one they saw when they were ten years old. History shows us that that is the way of such fellows in all ages, as the gentleman said; and he gave you Beethoven as an example. But an example like that don’t go home to you, because there isn’t one man in a million that ever heard of Beethoven. Take a man that everybody has heard of — Jack Randall! The very same things were said of HIM. After that, you needn’t go to musicians for an example. The truth is, that there are people in the world with that degree of envy and malice in them that they can’t bear to allow a good man his merits; and when they have to admit that he can do one thing, they try to make out that there’s something else he can’t do. Come: I’ll put it to you short and businesslike. This German gentleman, who knows all about music, tells you that many pretend that this Wagner has game but no science. Well, I, though I know nothing about music, will bet you twenty-five pounds that there’s others that allow him to be full of science, but say that he has no game, and that all he does comes from his head, and not from his heart. I will. I’ll bet twenty-five pounds on it, and let the gentleman of the house be stakeholder, and the German gentleman referee. Eh? Well, I’m glad to see that there are no takers.

      “Now we’ll go to another little point that the gentleman forgot. He recommended you to LEARN — to make yourselves better and wiser from day to day. But he didn’t tell you why it is that you won’t learn, in spite of his advice. I suppose that, being a foreigner, he was afraid of hurting your feelings by talking too freely to you. But you’re not so thinskinned as to take offence at a little plain-speaking, I’ll be bound; so I tell you straight out that the reason you won’t learn is not that you don’t want to be clever, or that you are lazier than many that have learned a great deal, but just because you’d like people to think that you