NOTES TO THE PROLOGUE WHY SATAN ? I WHY have I chosen Satan for my spokesman in a discussion of what is, or is not, right? Seeking in the bottom of my heart, I think the answer might be: Because I am sick of hearing this war discussed from the point of view of God, as if the speaker or writer, English, French, German, American, or what not, held a brief from on high to" justify the ways of God to man" or rather to identify the ways of his own particular nation with the ways of God. I do not know who or what God is; but in these five years he has been called upon to back so many abominations and imbecilities, that it seems more decent not to take his name once more in vain, but rather speak of Evil in that of him who had the gentlemanly frankness to say to it "Be thou my Good." If right and wrong are to be discussed in war-time, yet with tolerable manners, it is as well to start from Evil as a great Reality, sub specie æternitatis; as an Archangel immanent in the Universe, not a little brimstone-stinking devil whom, like the witnesses at witch trials, we see issuing out of the mouth of people we dislike, and they, of course, see issuing out of ours. Besides, I am aware that it has not been from contemplating the lives of saints and sages that I have come by such notions of right and wrong as I possess; but rather from an occasional glimpse of Satan; and during these last years from a daily and hourly exhibition of the Waster. So it is natural and fitting that whatever these years have taught me on this subject should be set forth by a Puppet-Satan of my making, and from the point of view of this Satan's likings and dislikings. 115 II HELL'S PAVING STONES Proverbial wisdom has long recognized the occasional use to which Satan puts virtue. But the good intentions with which we are told that the Power of Evil paves his abode, are described as such as come to nothing. My contention is different. For to these paving-stones, nay this ashlar of Hell, I would add the good intentions which have been carried out. Indeed, alas, alas, it is this very reality and solidity, this being so splendidly up to sample, not mere words and excuses but generous deeds, unstinting self-immolation, which has fitted them as material for that palace of horror, wherein the Waster of Human Virtue indulges his barren pleasure in moral beauty. III SATAN IS THE ADVERSARY Furthermore, I have wanted to discuss the nature of Satan with my Reader, but first and foremost with myself, because it has been borne in upon me that in Time of War we all incline to take for granted that the Adversary is Satan. Please pause and notice that this placing of the three words means, by the habits of English syntax, the exact reverse of what those same three words mean when put in the contrary order, viz.; Satan is the Adversary. The latter is a dogma to which even my untheological self subscribes with more than theologic fervour. Indeed my Prologue deals precisely with the reasons why Satan is, as the pious phrase goes, the Old Enemy, the Arch-Adversary of Mankind. Satan, meaning thereby the essence of all Evil, defines himself to the Muse, to myself and to my future readers, as the Power that wastes. And, more particularly, wastes human virtue. In so far, he is the Adversary against whom we must all, and always, struggle with all our will and all our wits. So far so good. But now I come to my essential difference with patriotic (which is not saying "public spirited") persons in all belligerent camps alike; an irreconcilable difference, but one too easily over-looked owing to that habit of speech by which the mere position of two nouns decides which is the qualified and which the qualifier. For I put "Satan" first, and "Adversary" second; while they-the patriotic persons of all this tormented globe-invariably put "Adversary first and "Satan" second. So that while my meaning is that we must never leave off struggling with Satan wheresoever he lurketh; their meaning is that we must in these particular present years of Grace, or Disgrace, lavish all our energy, wealth, strength, health, wit, and our virtues and all the best of our life and lives, in trying to take by the scruff of the neck (as does Pharaoh on Egyptian sculptures of B.C. 4000) and smite withal, a particular nation or group of nations, who, being at war with us for the first time in history, is at present our Adversary. A mode of proceeding which, as I have tried to show in my play, is precisely similar, and symmetrical, to that of the other party, the two (as archæologists say) heraldically opposed groups constituting a double deed of Waste, and as such the supreme oblation to the Power of Evil. But this little difference, according as the sentence runs "Satan is the Adversary" or "The Adversary is Satan," repays our further scrutiny. For the inversion, the putting of an Adversary, i.e. a human being or group of human beings, in the place of Evil as such, happens to be one of Satan's oldest and most successful wiles, which he compasses (as I have ventured to make him explain) by means of two most serviceable minions of his, namely Delusion and Confusion. Let us look further still into the matter. Take the formula "Satan is the Adversary"; there Satan-meaning the infliction of useless loss and pain, the fruitless sacrifice (as distinguished from the enriching exchange of good) Satan, as all religions have taught, is, actually and potentially, in all and every one of us alike. Hence our chief dealings and wrestlings with that Old Enemy must be in ourselves. This much will be conceded theoretically by patriotic persons, who are oftenest religious and nearly always idealistic and quite devoted to duty; similarly patriotic persons can have no objection to any amount of quiet individual tussle with such impurities and covetousness as, by definition, dwell in the privacy of each human breast. But that is not what I am alluding to. I don't know whether every individual really is impure and covetous and entirely without spiritual health in him; that is a matter in which each is best (or perhaps worst ?) fitted to speak for himself; anyhow it is a debatable and recondite, a delicate matter. What, on the contrary, is neither debatable nor recondite, indeed, as the French expression goes, puts out one's eyes, is that all Groups of human beings, Classes, Races, Corporations, Nations, etc., are bursting with all manner of folly, improvidence, selfishness, and general unwholesomeness; just as at the same time they are replete (if in less undisguised and explosive a fashion) with every human wisdom and virtue. So that methinks it is not so much the individual's peccadilloes (best left to the neighbours, the policeman, and even to his conscience) which require collective and public dealing with, as the sins of commission and omission of the collectivity, of the various collectivities, of our class, corporation, race, nation, etc.; and of yours, of course, likewise. Each collectivity or group being (like each individual only much more so) a battlefield between the Powers of Good and the Powers of Evil; each collectivity carrying in itself its proper complement of minions and emanations of Satan, against whom that same collectivity's forces of wisdom and decency can struggle unimpeded by the forces of wisdom and decency of other collectivities. Nay; not merely unimpeded. For here comes in the future benefit of those railways, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers, which so far have contributed to bring about and organize war; the good sense and good feeling in each collectivity, its real powers of real self-defence, can unite, must and will unite, indeed (Berne 1919) are beginning to unite, with the similar good sense and good feeling in every other collectivity; labour with labour, science with science, education with education, womankind with womankind; nay, perhaps even those hitherto ambiguous forces, genius with genius, and heroism with heroism, may unite in every part of the world to diminish or forbid the various great old-established oblations to Satan : Disease, Pauperism, Overwork, Ignorance, Prostitution, Profiteering and War. For Satan is the Adversary of all of us alike. And we are all, yes, even when thousands of men have barely ceased pounding each other into putrescence, or showering |