Touch and Go | Page 6

debt. We must
admit that it is long overdue. But this last condition! In vain we study
our anatomy to see which part we can best spare.
Where is our Portia, to save us with a timely quibble? We've plenty of
Portias. They've recited their heads off--"The quality of mercy is not
strained." But the old Shylock of the proletariat persists. He pops up
again, and says, "All right, I can't have my pound of flesh with the
blood. But then you can't keep my pound of flesh with your blood--you
owe it to me. It is your business to deliver the goods. Deliver it
then--with or without blood--deliver it." The Portia scratches her head,
and thinks again.
What's the solution? There is no solution. But still there is a choice.
There's a choice between a mess and a tragedy. If Plebs and Bully hang
on one to each end of the bone, and pull for grim life, they will at last

tear the bone to atoms: in short, destroy the whole material substance of
life, and so perish by accident, no better than a frog under the wheel of
destiny. That may be a disaster, but it is only a mess for all that.
On the other hand, if they have a fight to fight they might really drop
the bone. Instead of wrangling the bone to bits they might really go
straight for one another. They are like hostile parties on board a ship,
who both proceed to scuttle the ship so as to sink the other party. Down
goes the ship, with all the bally lot on board. A few survivors swim and
squeal among the bubbles--and then silence.
It is too much to suppose that the combatants will ever drop the
obvious old bone. But it is not too much to imagine that some men
might acknowledge the bone to be merely a pretext, and hollow _casus
belli_. If we really could know what we were fighting for, if we if we
could deeply believe in what we were fighting for, then the struggle
might have dignity, beauty, satisfaction for us. If it were a profound
struggle for something that was coming to life in us, a struggle that we
were convinced would bring us to a new freedom, a new life, then it
would be a creative activity, a creative activity in which death is a
climax in the progression towards new being. And this is tragedy.
Therefore, if we could but comprehend or feel the tragedy in the great
Labour struggle, the intrinsic tragedy of having to pass through death to
birth, our souls would still know some happiness, the very happiness of
creative suffering. Instead of which we pile accident on accident, we
tear the fabric of our existence fibre by fibre, we confidently look
forward to the time when the whole great structure will come down on
our heads. Yet after all that, when we are squirming under the debris,
we shall have no more faith or hope or satisfaction than we have now.
We shall crawl from under one cart-wheel straight under another.
The essence of tragedy, which is creative crisis, is that a man should go
through with his fate, and not dodge it and go bumping into an accident.
And the whole business of life, at the great critical periods of mankind,
is that men should accept and be one with their tragedy. Therefore we
should open our hearts. For one thing we should have a People's
Theatre. Perhaps it would help us in this hour of confusion better than

anything.
HERMITAGE, June, 1919.

CHARACTERS
GERALD BARLOW. MR. BARLOW (his father). OLIVER TURTON.
JOB ARTHUR FREER. WILLIE HOUGHTON. ALFRED BREFFITT.
WILLAM (a butler). CLERKS, MINERS, etc. ANABEL WRATH.
MRS. BARLOW. WINIFRED BARLOW. EVA (a maid).

TOUCH AND GO

ACT I
SCENE I
Sunday morning. Market-place of a large mining village in the
Midlands. A man addressing a small gang of colliers from the foot of a
stumpy memorial obelisk. Church bells heard. Church- goers passing
along the outer pavements.
WILLIE HOUGHTON. What's the matter with you folks, as I've told
you before, and as I shall keep on telling you every now and again,
though it doesn't make a bit of difference, is that you've got no idea of
freedom whatsoever. I've lived in this blessed place for fifty years, and
I've never seen the spark of an idea, nor of any response to an idea,
come out of a single one of you, all the time. I don't know what it is
with colliers--whether it's spending so much time in the bowels of the
earth--but they never seem to be able to get their thoughts above their
bellies. If you've got plenty to eat and drink, and