LOMAX (much taken aback). Oh I say! UNDERSHAFT. Mr. Lomax looks at the matter in a very proper spirit my dear. LOMAX. Just so. Thats all I meant, I assure you. SARAH. Are you coming, Stephen? STEPHEN. Well, I am rather busy -- er -- (Magnanimously.) Oh well, yes: I'll come. That is, if there is room for me. UNDERSHAFT. I can take two with me in a little motor I am experimenting with for field use. You wont mind its being rather unfashionable. It's not painted yet; but it's bullet proof. LOMAX (appalled at the prospect of confronting Wilton Crescent in an unpainted motor). Oh I s a y! SARAH. The carriage for me, thank you. Barbara doesnt mind what shes seen in. LOMAX. I say, Dolly old chap: do you really mind the car being a guy? Because of course if you do I'll go in it. Still -- CUSINS. I prefer it. LOMAX. Thanks awfully, old man. Come, Sarah. (He hurries out to secure his seat in the carriage. Sarah follows him.) CUSINS (moodily walking across to lady Britomart's writing table). Why are we two coming to this Works Department of Hell? that is what I ask myself. BARBARA. I have always thought of it as a sort of pit where lost creatures with blackened faces stirred up smoky fires and were driven and tormented by my father? Is it like that, dad? UNDERSHAFT (scandalized). My dear! It is a spotlessly clean and beautiful hillside town. CUSINS. With a Methodist chapel? Oh d o say theres a Methodist chapel. UNDERSHAFT. There are two: a Primitive one and a sophisticated one. There is even an Ethical Society; but it is not much patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the High Explosives Sheds they object to the presence of Agnostics as unsafe. CUSINS. And yet they dont object to you! BARBARA. Do they obey all your orders? UNDERSHAFT. I never give them any orders. When I speak to one of them it is "Well, Jones, is the baby doing well? and has Mrs. Jones made a good recovery?" "Nicely, thank you, sir." And thats all. CUSINS. But Jones has to be kept in order. How do you maintain discipline among your men? UNDERSHAFT. I dont. They do. You see, the one thing Jones wont stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a week less than himself, and Mrs. Jones! Of course they all rebel against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I never bully them. I dont even bully Lazarus. I say that certain things are to be done; but I dont order anybody to do them. I dont say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about; the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen; the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which comes to me. CUSINS (revolted). You really are a -- well, what I was saying yesterday. BARBARA. What was he saying yesterday? UNDERSHAFT. Never mind, my dear. He thinly I have made you unhappy. Have I? BARBARA. Do you think I can be happy in this vulgar silly dress? I! who have worn the uniform. Do you understand what you have done to me? Yesterday I had a man's soul in my hand. I set him in the way of life with his face to salvation. But when we took your money he turned back to drunkenness and derision. (With intense conviction.) I will never forgive you that. If I had a child, and you destroyed its body with your explosives -- if you murdered Dolly with your horrible guns -- I could forgive you if my forgiveness would open the gates of heaven to you. But to take a human soul from me, and turn it into the soul of a wolf! that is worse than any murder. UNDERSHAFT. Does my daughter despair so easily? Can you strike a man to the heart and leave no mark on him? BARBARA (her face lighting up). Oh, you are right: he can never be lost now: where was my faith? CUSINS. Oh, clever clever devil! BARBARA. You may be a devil; but God speaks through you sometimes. (She takes her father's hands and kisses them.) You have given me back my happiness: I feel it deep down now, though my spirit is troubled. UNDERSHAFT. You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something. BARBARA. Well, take me to the factory of death, and let me learn something more. There must be some truth or other behind all this frightful irony. Come, Dolly. (She goes out.) CUSINS. My guardian angel! (To Undershaft.) Avaunt! (He follows Barbara.) STEPHEN (quietly, at the writing table). You must not mind Cusins, father. He is a very amiable good fellow; but he is a Greek scholar and naturally a little eccentric. UNDERSHAFT. Ah, quite so. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. (He goes out.) Stephen smiles patronizingly; buttons his coat responsibly; and crosses the room to the door. Lady Britomart, dressed for out-of-doors, opens it before he reaches it. She looks round for the others; looks at Stephen; and turns to go without a word. STEPHEN (embarrassed). Mother -- LADY BRITOMART. Dont be apologetic, Stephen. And dont forget that you have outgrown your mother. (She goes out.) Perivale St. Andrews lies between two Middlesex hills, half climbing the northern one. It is an almost smokeless town of white walls, roofs of narrow green slates or red tiles, tall trees, domes, campaniles, and slender chimney shafts, beautifully situated and beautiful in itself. The best view of it is obtained from the crest of a slope about half a mile to the east, where the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge spittles into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a platform of concrete, With a parapet which suggests a fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun alluded to by Stephen. The parapet has a high step inside which serves as a seat. Barbara is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold, with a fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge conical bombshell, with a red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction. Cusins arrives by the path from the town. BARBARA. Well? CUSINS. Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a hellish one. BARBARA. Have you found out whether they have done anything for old Peter Shirley. CUSINS. They have found him a job as gatekeeper and timekeeper. He's frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork, and says he isnt used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid that hes ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery. BARBARA. Poor Peter! Stephen arrives from the token. He carries a fieldglass. STEPHEN (enthusiastically). Have you two seen the place? Why did you leave us? CUSINS. I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and Barbara wanted to make the men talk. STEPHEN. Have you found anything discreditable? CUSINS. No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a cunning old rascal; but it's all horribly, frightfully, immorally, unanswerably perfect. Sarah arrives. SARAH. Heavens! what a place! (She crosses to the trolley.) Did you see the nursing home!? (She sits down on the shell.) STEPHEN. Did you see the libraries and schools!? SARAH. Did you see the ball room and the banqueting chamber in the Town Hall!? STEPHEN. Have you gone into the insurance fund, the pension fund, the building society, the various applications of co-operation!? Undershaft comes from the office, smith a sheaf of telegrams in his hands. UNDERSHAFT. Well, have you seen everything? I m sorry I was called away. (Indicating the telegrams.) News from Manchuria. STEPHEN. Good news, I hope. UNDERSHAFT. Very. STEPHEN. Another Japanese victory? UNDERSHAFT. Oh, I dont know. Which side wins does not concern us here. No: the good news is that the aerial battleship is a tremendous success. At the first trial it has wiped out a fort with three hundred soldiers in it. CUSINS (from the platform). Dummy soldiers? UNDERSHAFT. No: the real thing. (Cusins and Barbara exchange glances. Then Cusins sits on the step and buries his face in his hands. Barbara gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation.) Well, Stephen, what do you think of the place? STEPHEN. Oh, magnificent. A perfect triumph of organization. Frankly, my dear father, I have been a fool: I had no idea of what it all meant -- of the wonderful forethought, the power of organization, the administrative capacity, the financial genius, the colossal capital it represents. I have been repeating to myself as I came through your streets "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War." I have only one misgiving about it all. UNDERSHAFT. Out with it. STEPHEN. Well, I cannot help thinking that all this provision for every want of your workmen may sap their independence and weaken their sense of responsibility. And greatly as we enjoyed our tea at that splendid restaurant -- how they gave us all that luxury and cake and jam and cream for threepenee I really cannot imagine! -- still you must remember that restaurants break up home life. Look at the continent, for instance! Are you sure so much pampering is really good for the men's characters? UNDERSHAFT. Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply dont organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here. A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that we may be blown to smithereens at any moment. SARAH. By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives? UNDERSHAFT. In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite close to it are killed. Stephen, who is quite close to it, looks at it rather scaredly, and moves array quickly to the cannon. At the same moment the door of the shed is thrown abruptly open; and a foreman in overalls and list slippers comes out on the little landing and holds the door open for Lomax, who appears in the doorway. LOMAX (with studied coolness). My good fellow: you neednt get into a state of nerves. Nothing's going to happen to you; and I suppose it wouldnt be the end of the world if anything did. A little bit of British pluck is what y o u want, old chap. (He descends and strolls across to Sarah.) UNDERSHAFT (to the foreman). Anything wrong, Bilton? BILTON (with ironic calm). Gentleman walked into the high explosives shed and lit a cigaret, sir: thats all. UNDERSHAFT. Ah, quite so. ( To Lomax.) Do you happen to remember what you did with the match? LOMAX. Oh come! I'm not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it out before I chucked it away. BILTON. The top of it was red hot inside, sir. LOMAX. Well, suppose it was! I didnt chuck it into any of y o u r messes. UNDERSHAFT. Think no more of it, Mr. Lomax. By the way, would you mind lending me your matches? LOMAX (offering his bow). Certainly. UNDERSHAFT. Thanks. (He pockets the matches.) LOMAX (lecturing to the company generally). You know, these high explosives dont go off like gunpowder, except when theyre in a gun. When theyre spread loose, you can put a match to them without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of paper. (Warming to the scientific interest of the subject.) Did you know that, Undershaft? Have you ever tried? UNDERSHAFT. Not on a large scale, Mr. Lomax. Bilton will give you a sample of gun cotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You can experiment with it at home. (Bilton looks puzzled.) SARAH. Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it's your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly. (Bilton gives it up and retires into the shed.) LOMAX. My ownest, there is no danger. (He sits beside her on the shell.) Lady Britomart arrives from the town with a bouquet.