Salvation Army Symbol Analysis

[Money] is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and bank notes are money. The first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on reasonable terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving four men three shillings each for ten or twelve hours’ drudgery and one man a thousand pounds for nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love, and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money. And the evil to be attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priestcraft, kingcraft, demagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, nor any of the other scapegoats which reformers sacrifice, but simply poverty.

You will never get a high morality from people who conceive of their misdeeds as revocable and pardonable, or in a society where absolution an expiation are officially provided for us all. […] Thus Bill Walker, in my play, having assaulted the Salvation Lass, presently finds himself overwhelmed with an intolerable conviction of sin [… But the Salvation Army] will not punish him: it will not take his money. It will not tolerate a redeemed ruffian: it leaves him no means of salvation except ceasing to be a ruffian [… Barbara] refuses to prosecute a drunken ruffian; she converses on equal terms with a blackguard to whom no lady should be seen speaking in the public street: in short, she imitates Christ. Bill’s conscience reacts to this […] He is placed in a position of unbearable moral inferiority, and strives by every means in his power to escape from it.

LADY BRITOMART. […] I thought Barbara was going to make the most brilliant career of all of you. And what does she do? Joins the Salvation Army; discharges her maid; lives on a pound a week; and walks in one evening with a professor of Greek whom she has picked up in the street, who pretends to be a Salvationist, and actually plays the big drum for her in public because he has fallen head over ears in love with her.

STEPHEN. I was certainly taken aback when I heard they were engaged. […]

LADY BRITOMART. Oh, Adolphus Cusins will make a very good husband. After all […] Greek […] stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman. And my family, thank Heaven, is not a pigheaded Tory one. We are Whigs, and believe in liberty. Let snobbish people say what they please: Barbara shall marry, not the man they like, but the man I like.

LADY BRITOMART. But after all, Stephen, our present income comes from Andrew.

STEPHEN (shocked). I never knew that.

LADY BRITOMART: Well, you surely didnt suppose your grandfather had anything to give me. The Stevenages could not do everything for you. We gave you social position. Andrew had to contribute something. He had a very good bargain, I think.

STEPHEN (bitterly). We are utterly dependent on him and his cannons, then?

LADY BRITOMART. Certainly not: the money is settled. But he provided it. So you can see it is not a question of taking money from him or not: it is simply a question of how much. I dont want any more for myself.

THE MAN. […] Furst, I’m intelligent […]intelligent beyond the station o life into which it has pleased the capitalists to call me; and they dont like a man that sees through em. Second, an intelligent bein needs a doo share of appiness; so I drink somethink cruel when I get the chawnce. Third, I stand by my class and do as little as I can so’s to leave arf the job for me fellow workers. Fourth, I’m fly enough to know wots inside the law and wots outside it; and inside it I do as the capitalists do: pinch wot I can lay me ands on. In a proper state of society, I am sober, industrious, and honest: in Rome, so to speak, I do as the Romans do. Wots the consequence? When trade is bad—and it’s rotten bad just now—and the employers az to sack arf their men, they generally start on me.

SHIRLEY. […] Holy God! I’ve worked ten to twelve hours a day since I was thirteen, and paid my way all through; and now am I to be thrown into the gutter and my job given to a young man that can do it no better than me because Ive black hair that goes white at the first change?

PRICE (cheerfully). No good jawrin about it. Youre only a jumped-up, jerked-off, orspittle-turned-out incurable of an ole workin man: who cares about you? Eh? Make the thevin swine give you a meal: theyve stole many a one from you. Get a bit o your own back. (JENNY returns with the usual meal). There you are, brother. Awsk a blessin an tuck that into you.

SHIRLEY (looking at it ravenously but not touching it, and crying like a child). I never took anything before.

CUSINS. Father Undershaft: you are mistaken. I am a sincere Salvationist. You do not understand the Salvation Army. It is the army of joy, of love, of courage: it has banished the fear and remorse and despair of the old and hell-ridden evangelical sects: it marches to fight the devil with trumpet and drum, with music and dancing, with banner and palm, as becomes a sally from heaven by its happy garrison. It picks the waster out of the public house and makes a man of him: it finds a worm wiggling in a back kitchen, and lo! a woman! Men and women of rank, too, sons and daughters of the Highest. It takes the poor professor of Greek, the most artificial and self-suppressed of human creatures, from his meal of roots and lets loose the rhapsodist in him; […] sends him down the public street drumming dithyrambs.

UNDERSHAFT (cold and sardonic). Have you ever been in love with Poverty, like St Francis? Have you ever been in love with Dirt, like St Simeon? Have you ever been in love with disease and suffering, like our nurses and philanthropists? Such passions are not virtues, but the most unnatural of all the vices. This love of the common people may please an earl’s granddaughter and a university professor; but I have been a common man and a poor man; and it has no romance for me. Leave it to the poor to pretend that poverty is a blessing; leave it to the coward to make a religion of his cowardice by preaching humility: we know better than that. We three must stand together above the common people: how else can we help their children to climb up beside us? Barbara must belong to us, not to the Salvation Army.

BARBARA. Weve just had a splendid experience meeting at the other gate in Cripp’s lane. Ive hardly ever seen them so much moved as they were by your confession, Mr Price.

PRICE. I could almost be glad of my past wickedness if I could believe that it would elp to keep hathers stright.

BARBARA. So it will, Snobby. How much, Jenny?

JENNY. Four and tenpence, Major.

BARBARA. Oh Snobby, if you had given your poor mother just one more kick, we should have got the whole five shillings!

[…]

UNDERSHAFT. Shall I contribute the odd twopence, Barbara? The millionaire’s mite, eh? (He takes a couple of pennies from his pocket).

BARBARA. How did you make that twopence?

UNDERSHAFT. As usual. By selling cannons, torpedoes, submarines, and my new patent Grand Duke hand grenade.

BARBARA. Put it back in your pocket. You cant buy your Salvation here for twopence: you must work it out.

BILL. Aw downt want to be forvive by you, or be ennybody. Wot Aw did Aw’ll py for. Aw trawd to gat me aown jawr browk to settisfaw you—

JENNY (distressed). Oh no—

BILL (impatiently). Tell y’Aw did: cawnt you listen to wots bein taold you? All Aw got be it was being mide a sawt of in the pablic street for me pines. Well, if Aw cawnt settisfaw you one wy. Aw ken anather. Listen eah! Aw ed two quid sived agen the frost; an Awve a pahnd of it left. […] Eahs the manney. Tike it; and lets ev no more o your forgivin an pryin and your Mijor jawrin me. Let wot Aw dan be dan an pide for; and let there be an end of it.

JENNY. Oh, I couldnt take it, Mr Walker.

LOMAX. […] it must have been apparent to you that there is a certain among of tosh about—

LADY BRITOMART. Charles: if you must drivel, drivel like a grown-up man and not like a schoolboy.

LOMAX (out of countenance). Well, drivel is drivel, dont you know, whatever a man’s age.

LADY BRITOMART: In good society, in England, Charles, men drivel at all ages by repeating silly formulas with an air of wisdom. Schoolboys make their own formulas out of slang, like you. When they reach your age, and get political private secretaryships and things of that sort, they drop slang and get their formulas out of the Spectator or the Times. You had better confine yourself to the Times. You will find that there is a certain amount of tosh about the Times, but at least its language is reputable.

LOMAX (overwhelmed). You are so awfully strongminded, Lady Brit—

BARBARA. Justify yourself: shew me some light through the darkness of this dreadful place, with its beautifully clean workshops, and respectable workmen, and model homes.

UNDERSHAFT. Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification, Barbara: they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give them thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

BARBARA: And their souls?

UNDERSHAFT: I save their souls, just as I saved yours […] from the seven deadly sins […which are] Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability, and children. Nothing can lift these seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

BARBARA. There is no wicked side: life is all one. And I never wanted to shirk my share in whatever evil must be endured, whether it be sin or suffering. I wish I could cure you of middle-class ideas, Dolly.

[…]

BARBARA. […] I […] felt that I must have [the factory because of] all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, sobbing with gratitude for a scrap of bread and treacle, but fulfilled, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities, and thinking that my father ought to be greatly obliged to them for making so much money for him—and so he ought. That is where salvation is really wanted. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread.