Waste Part 11

WEDGECROFT. Well, I wish it had. Perfect balance is most easily lost. How do you know you've the power of recovery? ... and it's that gets one up in the morning day by day.

TREBELL. Is it? My brain works steadily on ... hasn't failed me yet. I keep it well fed. [_He breathes deeply._] But I'm not sure one shouldn't have been away from England for five years instead of five weeks ... to come back to a job like this with a fresh mind. D'you know why really I went back on the Liberals over this question? Not because they wanted the church money for their pensions ... but because all they can see in Disestablishment is destruction. Any fool can destroy! I'm not going to let a power like the Church get loose from the State. A thirteen hundred years, tradition of service ... and all they can think of is to cut it adrift!

WEDGECROFT. I think the Church is moribund.

TREBELL. Oh, yes, of course you do ... you sentimental agnostic anarchist.

Nonsense! The supernatural's a bit blown upon ... till we re-discover what it means. But it's not essential. Nor is the Christian doctrine. Put a Jesuit in a corner and shut the door and he'll own that. No ... the tradition of self-sacrifice and fellowship in service for its own sake ...

that's the spirit we've to capture and keep.

WEDGECROFT. [_Really struck._] A secular Church!

TREBELL. [_With reasoning in his tone._] Well ... why not? Listen here. In drafting an act of Parliament one must alternately imagine oneself G.o.d Almighty and the most ignorant prejudiced little blighter who will be affected by what's pa.s.sed. G.o.d says: Let's have done with Heaven and h.e.l.l ... it's the Earth that shan't pa.s.s away. Why not turn all those theology mongers into doctors or schoolmasters?

WEDGECROFT. As to doctors--

TREBELL. Quite so, you naturally prejudiced blighter. That priestcraft don't need re-inforcing.

WEDGECROFT. It needs recognition.

TREBELL. What! It's the only thing most people believe in. Talk about superst.i.tion! However, there's more life in you. Therefore it's to be schoolmasters.

WEDGECROFT. How?

TREBELL. Listen again, young man. In the youth of the world, when priests were the teachers of men....

WEDGECROFT. [_Not to be preached at._] And physicians of men.

TREBELL. Shut up.

WEDGECROFT. If there's any real reform going, I want my profession made into a state department. I won't shut up for less.

TREBELL. [_Putting this aside with one finger._] I'll deal with you later.

There's still Youth in the world in another sense; but the priests haven't found out the difference yet, so they're wasting most of their time.

WEDGECROFT. Religious education won't do now-a-days.

TREBELL. What's Now-a-days? You're very dull, Gilbert.

WEDGECROFT. I'm not duller than the people who will have to understand your scheme.

TREBELL. They won't understand it. I shan't explain to them that education _is_ religion, and that those who deal in it are priests without any laying on of hands.

WEDGECROFT. No matter what they teach?

TREBELL. No ... the matter is how they teach it. I see schools in the future, Gilbert, not built next to the church, but on the site of the church.

WEDGECROFT. Do you think the world is grown up enough to do without dogma?

TREBELL. Yes, I do.

WEDGECROFT. What!... and am I to write my prescriptions in English?

TREBELL. Yes, you are.

WEDGECROFT. Lord save us! I never thought to find you a visionary.

TREBELL. Isn't it absurd to think that in a hundred years we shall be giving our best brains and the price of them not to training grown men into the discipline of destruction ... not even to curing the ills which we might be preventing ... but to teaching our children. There's nothing else to be done ... nothing else matters. But it's work for a priesthood.

WEDGECROFT. [_Affected; not quite convinced._] Do you think you can buy a tradition and trans.m.u.te it?

TREBELL. Don't mock at money.

WEDGECROFT. I never have.

TREBELL. But you speak of it as an end not as a means. That's unfair.

WEDGECROFT. I speaks as I finds.

TREBELL. I'll buy the Church, not with money, but with the promise of new life. [_A certain rather gleeful cunning comes over him._] It'll only look like a dose of reaction at first ... Sectarian Training Colleges endowed to the hilt.

WEDGECROFT. What'll the Nonconformists say?

TREBELL. Bribe them with the means of equal efficiency. The crux of the whole matter will be in the statutes. I'll force on those colleges.

WEDGECROFT. They'll want dogma.

TREBELL. Dogma's not a bad thing if you've power to adapt it occasionally.

WEDGECROFT. Instead of spending your brains in explaining it. Yes, I agree.

TREBELL. [_With full voice._] But in the creed I'll lay down as unalterable there shall be neither Jew nor Greek.... What do you think of St. Paul, Gilbert?

WEDGECROFT. I'd make him the head of a college.

TREBELL. I'll make the Devil himself head of a college, if he'll undertake to teach honestly all he knows.

WEDGECROFT. And he'll conjure up Comte and Robespierre for you to a.s.sist in this little _rechauffee_ of their schemes.

TREBELL. Hullo! Comte I knew about. Have I stolen from Robespierre too?

WEDGECROFT. [_Giving out the epigram with an air._] Property to him who can make the best use of it.

TREBELL. And then what we must do is to give the children power over their teachers?

_Now he is comically enigmatic._ WEDGECROFT _echoes him._

WEDGECROFT. And what exactly do you mean by that?

TREBELL. [_Serious again._] How positive a pedagogue would you be if you had to prove your cases and justify your creed every century or so to the pupils who had learnt just a little more than you could teach them? Give power to the future, my friend ... not to the past. Give responsibility ... even if you give it for your own discredit. What's beneath trust deeds and last wills and testaments, and even acts of Parliament and official creeds? Fear of the verdict of the next generation ... fear of looking foolish in their eyes. Ah, we ... doing our best now ... must be ready for every sort of death. And to provide the means of change and disregard of the past is a secret of statesmanship. Presume that the world will come to an end every thirty years if it's not reconstructed. Therefore give responsibility ...