George Bernard Shaw

“ Man is ruled by beauty, by charm. The men who are not have no influence. The Salic Law, which forbade women to occupy a throne, is founded on the fact that when a woman is on the throne the country is ruled by men, and therefore ruled badly; whereas when a man is on the throne, the country is ruled by women, and therefore ruled well. The suffragets would degrade women from being rulers to being voters, mere politicians, the drudges of the caucus and the polling booth. We should lose our influence completely under such a state of affairs. The New Zealand women have the vote. ”

“ LADY CORINTHIA. I dont want you to talk. I want you to listen. You do not yet understand my views on the question of the Suffrage. [She rises to make a speech.] I must preface my remarks by reminding you that the Suffraget movement is essentially a dowdy movement. The suffragets are not all dowdies; but they are mainly supported by dowdies. Now I am not a dowdy. Oh, no compliments—
MITCHENER. I did not utter a sound.
LADY CORINTHIA. [smiling] It is easy to read your thoughts. I am one of those women who are accustomed to rule the world through men. ”

“ The average Englishwoman is a dowdy and never has half a chance of becoming anything else. She hasnt any charm; and she has no high notes except when shes giving her husband a piece of her mind, or calling down the street for one of the children.
LADY CORINTHIA. How disgusting!
MITCHENER. Somebody must do the dowdy work! If we had to choose between pitching all the dowdies into the Thames and pitching all the lovely and accomplished women, the lovely ones would have to go.
LADY CORINTHIA. And if you had to do without Wagner's music or do without your breakfast, you would do without Wagner. ”

“ MRS. BANGER. We have come to tell you plainly that the Anti- Suffragets are going to fight.
MITCHENER. [gallantly] Oh, pray leave that to the men, Mrs. Banger.
LADY CORINTHIA. We can no longer trust the men.
MRS. BANGER. They have shown neither the strength, the courage, nor the determination which are needed to combat women like the Suffragets. ”

“ MRS. BANGER. How can you tell? You never knew that the hero of the charge at Kassassin was a woman: yet she was: it was I, Rosa Carmina Banger. Would Napoleon have been so brutal to women, think you, had he been a man?
MITCHENER. Oh, come, come! Really! Surely female rulers have often shown all the feminine weaknesses. Queen Elizabeth, for instance. Her vanity, her levity.
MRS. BANGER. Nobody who has studied the history of Queen Elizabeth can doubt for a moment that she was a disguised man.
LADY CORINTHIA. [admiring Mrs. Banger] Isnt she splendid? ”

“ BALSQUITH. I mean the part about drawing a cordon round Westminster at a distance of two miles; and turning all women out of it.
MITCHENER. A masterpiece of strategy. Let me explain. The Suffragets are a very small body; but they are numerous enough to be troublesome—even dangerous—when they are all concentrated in one place—say in Parliament Square. But by making a two-mile radius and pushing them beyond it, you scatter their attack over a circular line twelve miles long. A superb piece of tactics. Just what Wellington would have done.
BALSQUITH. But the women wont go. ”

“ Yes: it is indeed Balsquith. It has come to this: that the only way that the Prime Minister of England can get from Downing Street to the War Office is by assuming this disguise; shrieking "VOTES for Women"; and chaining himself to your doorscraper. They were at the corner in force. They cheered me. Bellachristina herself was there. She shook my hand and told me to say I was a vegetarian, as the diet was better in Holloway for vegetarians.
MITCHENER. Why didnt you telephone?
BALSQUITH. They tap the telephone. Every switchboard in London is in their hands or in those of their young men. ”

“ Military methods are really the most merciful in the end. You keep sending these misguided women to Holloway and killing them slowly and inhumanely by ruining their health; and it does no good: they go on worse than ever. Shoot a few, promptly and humanely; and there will be an end at once of all resistance and of all the suffering that resistance entails.
BALSQUITH. But public opinion would never stand it. ”

“ MITCHENER. [rising intolerantly and going to the hearthrug] That wont do for me. Dont be weak-kneed, Balsquith. You know perfectly well that the real government of this country is and always must be the government of the masses by the classes. You know that democracy is damned nonsense, and that no class stands less of it than the working class. You know that we are already discussing the steps that will have to be taken if the country should ever be face to face with the possibility of a Labor majority in parliament. ”

“ BALSQUITH. The Labor party is taking the same line. They say the men got the Factory Acts by hiding behind the women's petticoats, and that they will get votes for the army in the same way.
MITCHENER. Balsquith: we must not yield to clamor. I have just told this lady that I am at last convinced—
BALSQUITH. [joyfully] That the suffragets must be supported.
MITCHENER. No: that the anti-suffragets must be put down at all hazards.
BALSQUITH. Same thing.
MITCHENER. No. For you now tell me that the Labor Party demands votes for women. ”

“ LADY CORINTHIA. The suffragets have turned the whole woman movement on to the wrong track. They ask for a vote.
MRS. BANGER. What use is a vote? Men have the vote.
LADY CORINTHIA. And men are slaves.
MRS. BANGER. What women need is the right to military service. Give me a well-mounted regiment of women with sabres, opposed to a regiment of men with votes. ”

“ LADY CORINTHIA. Love—real love—makes all intentions honorable. But you could never understand that.
MITCHENER. Ill not submit to the vulgar penny-novelette notion that an officer is less honorable than a civilian in his relations with women. ”

“ MRS. BANGER. That does not concern us in the least. We approve of the project and will see that it is carried out. We have spent a good deal of money arming ourselves; and we are not going to have that money thrown away through the pusillanimity of a Cabinet of males.
MITCHENER. Arming yourselves! But, my dear ladies, under the latest proclamation women are strictly forbidden to carry chains, padlocks, tracts on the franchise, or weapons of any description.
LADY CORINTHIA. [producing an ivory-handled revolver and pointing it at his nose] You little know your countrywomen, General Mitchener. ”

“ LADY CORINTHIA. General Mitchener: your designs on Mrs. Banger are defeated. She is engaged to General Sandstone. Do you still prefer her to me?
MRS. FARRELL. Hes out o the hunt. Hes engaged to me.
The Orderly overcome by this news reels from the door to the standing desk, and clutches the stool to save himself from collapsing. MITCHENER. And extremely proud of it, Lady Corinthia.
LADY CORINTHIA. [contemptuously] She suits you exactly. [Coming to Balsquith.] Mr. Balsquith: you at least, are not a Philistine.
BALSQUITH. No, Lady Corinthia; but Im a confirmed bachelor. I don't want a wife ”

“ LADY CORINTHIA. Nature is too strong for the combatants.
MRS. BANGER. Physical struggles between persons of opposite sexes are unseemly.
LADY CORINTHIA. Demoralizing.
MRS. BANGER. Insincere.
LADY CORINTHIA. They are merely embraces in disguise.
MRS. BANGER. No such suspicion can attach to combats in which the antagonists are of the same sex.
LADY CORINTHIA. The Anti-Suffragets have resolved to take the field.
MRS. BANGER. They will enforce the order of General Sandstone for the removal of all women from the two mile radius—that is, all women except themselves. ”

“ No poet ever makes a New Zealand woman his heroine. One might as well be romantic about New Zealand mutton. Look at the suffragets themselves. The only ones who are popular are the pretty ones, who flirt with mobs as ordinary women flirt with officers. ”

“ A soldier always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot. ”

“ I bet you another that Chubbs-Jenkinson apologizes abjectly. You evidently havent heard the news.
MITCHENER. What news?
BALSQUITH. It turns out that the curate is well connected. [Mitchener staggers at the shock. Speechless he contemplates Balsquith with a wild and ghastly stare; then reels into his chair and buries his face in his hands over the blotter. Balsquith continues remorselessly, stooping over him to rub it in.] He has three aunts in the peerage; and Lady Richmond's one of them; [Mitchener utters a heartrending groan] and they all adore him. ”

“ Balsquith shakes his head. They contemplate one another in miserable silence.
A VOICE WITHOUT. Votes for Women! Votes for Women!
A terrific explosion shakes the building—they take no notice.
MITCHENER. [breaking down] You dont know what this means to me, Balsquith. I love the army. I love my country. ”

“ Pray does that make eggs and bacon more precious than music, or the butcher and baker better than the poet and philosopher? The scullery may be more necessary to our bare existence than the cathedral. ”

“ THE ORDERLY. What Im saying to you is the voice of old England a jolly sight more than all this rot that you get out of books. Id rather be spoke to by a sergeant than by you. He tells me to go to hell when I challenges him to argue it out like a man. ”

“ BALSQUITH. The strain is too much for the Cabinet. The old Liberal and Unionist Free Traders declare that if they are defeated on their resolution to invite tenders from private contractors for carrying on the Army and Navy, they will go solid for votes for women as the only means of restoring the liberties of the country which we have destroyed by compulsory military service. ”

“ You know that in that case we should disfranchise the mob, and, if they made a fuss, shoot them down. You know that if we need public opinion to support us, we can get any quantity of it manufactured in our papers by poor devils of journalists who will sell their souls for five shillings. ”

“ General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the hearthrug than to the desk. There is a chair at each end of it for persons having business with the general. There is a telephone on the table. Long silence.
A VOICE OUTSIDE. Votes for Women! ”

“ Obey your orders instantly, Sir, and dont presume to argue. Even if she kills you, it is your duty to die for your country. Right about face. March. [The Orderly goes out, trembling.]
THE VOICE OUTSIDE. Votes for Women! Votes for Women! Votes for Women!
MITCHENER [mimicking her] . Votes for Women! Votes for Women! Votes for Women! [in his natural voice] Votes for children! Votes for babies! Votes for monkeys! [He posts himself on the hearthrug, and awaits the enemy.] ”

“ When I remonstrated with Sandstone she positively shouted "Right-about-face. March" at me in the most offensive tone. If she hadnt been a woman I should have punched her head. I precious nearly punched Sandstone's. The horrors of martial law administered by Mrs. Banger are too terrible to be faced. I demand civil rights for the army.
THE ORDERLY. [chuckling] Wot oh, General! Wot oh!
MITCHENER. Hold your tongue. [He goes to the door and calls.] Mrs. Farrell! [Returning, and again addressing the Orderly] Civil rights don't mean the right to be uncivil. ”

“ Balsquith. Give the women the vote and give the army civil rights; and av done with it.
Mitchener returns. MITCHENER. Balsquith: prepare to hear the worst.
BALSQUITH. Sandstone is no more?
MITCHENER. On the contrary, he is particularly lively. He has softened Mrs. Banger by a proposal of marriage in which he appears to be perfectly in earnest. He says he has met his ideal at last, a really soldierly woman. She will sit on his head for the rest of his life; and the British Army is now to all intents and purposes commanded by Mrs. Banger. ”

“ Quite right. I forgot them. [To Mitchener] Would you mind my seeing them here? I feel extraordinarily grateful to these women for standing by us and facing the suffragets, especially as they are naturally the gentler and timid sort of women. [The Orderly moans.] Did you say anything?
THE ORDERLY. No, Sir.
BALSQUITH. Did you catch their names.
THE ORDERLY. Yes, Sir. The president is Lady Corinthia Fanshawe; and the secretary is Mrs. Banger.
MITCHENER. [abruptly] Mrs. what?
THE ORDERLY. Mrs. Banger.
BALSQUITH. Curious that quiet people always seem to have violent names. ”

“ If three-quarters of us was killed, how many people would there be in England in another generation? If it wasnt for that, the man'd put the fightin on us just as they put all the other dhrudgery. What would YOU do if we was all kilt? ”