In the meantime there is, for him, another history to
write; for me, another comedy to stage. Perhaps, after all, that
is what wars are for, and what historians and playwrights are
for. If men will not learn until their lessons are written in
blood, why, blood they must have, their own for preference.
The Ephemeral Thrones and the Eternal Theatre
To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever Bastilles fall, the
theatre will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All Highest
Hohenzollern languishes in Holland, threatened with trial on a
capital charge of fighting for his country against England;
Imperial Romanoff, said to have perished miserably by a more
summary method of murder, is perhaps alive or perhaps dead:
nobody cares more than if he had been a peasant; the lord of
Hellas is level with his lackeys in republican Switzerland; Prime
Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief have passed from a brief glory
as Solons and Caesars into failure and obscurity as closely on
one another's heels as the descendants of Banquo; but Euripides
and Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Moliere, Goethe and Ibsen
remain fixed in their everlasting seats.
How War muzzles the Dramatic Poet
As for myself, why, it may be asked, did I not write two plays
about the war instead of two pamphlets on it? The answer is
significant.
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