at? Before the few changes we were forced to make by the revolutions
that followed the Four Years War, our governing classes had been so
rich, as it was called, that they had become the most intellectually
lazy and fat-headed people on the face of the earth. There is a good
deal of that fat still clinging to us.

BURGE-LUBIN. As President, I must not listen to unpatriotic criticisms
of our national character, Mr Archbishop.

THE ARCHBISHOP. As Archbishop, Mr President, it is my official duty to
criticize the national character unsparingly. At the canonization of
Saint Henrik Ibsen, you yourself unveiled the monument to him which
bears on its pedestal the noble inscription, 'I came not to call
sinners, but the righteous, to repentance.' The proof of what I say
is that our routine work, and what may be called our ornamental and
figure-head work, is being more and more sought after by the English;
whilst the thinking, organizing, calculating, directing work is done by
yellow brains, brown brains, and black brains, just as it was done in
my early days by Jewish brains, Scottish brains, Italian brains, German
brains. The only white men who still do serious work are those who, like
the Accountant General, have no capacity for enjoyment, and no social
gifts to make them welcome outside their offices.

BARNABAS. Confound your impudence! I had gifts enough to find you out,
anyhow.

THE ARCHBISHOP [_disregarding this outburst_] If you were to kill me as
I stand here, you would have to appoint an Indian to succeed me. I take
precedence today not as an Englishman, but as a man with more than a
century and a half of fully adult experience. We are letting all the