Dakota; to grotesque hypocrisy, cruel persecution, and final
utter confusion of conventions and compliances with benevolence
and respectability. It is quite useless to declare that all men
are born free if you deny that they are born good. Guarantee a
man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To
guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral
character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every
man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment, which any
fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether
as a prophet or as a rascal. This is the lesson Democracy has to
learn before it can become anything but the most oppressive of
all the priesthoods.

Let us now return to Bill Walker and his case of conscience
against the Salvation Army. Major Barbara, not being a modern
Tetzel, or the treasurer of a hospital, refuses to sell Bill
absolution for a sovereign. Unfortunately, what the Army can
afford to refuse in the case of Bill Walker, it cannot refuse in
the case of Bodger. Bodger is master of the situation because he
holds the purse strings. "Strive as you will," says Bodger, in
effect: "me you cannot do without. You cannot save Bill Walker
without my money." And the Army answers, quite rightly under the
circumstances, "We will take money from the devil himself sooner
than abandon the work of Salvation." So Bodger pays his
conscience-money and gets the absolution that is refused to Bill.
In real life Bill would perhaps never know this. But I, the
dramatist, whose business it is to show the connexion between
things that seem apart and unrelated in the haphazard order of
events in real life, have contrived to make it known to Bill,
with the result that the Salvation Army loses its hold of him at