Mrs. Baines. Barbara: Lord Saxmundham gives us the money to stop drinking—to take his own business from him.
Undershaft. I also, Mrs. Baines, may claim a little disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with Iyddite! the oceans of blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants forced, women and men, to till their fields under the fire of opposing armies on pain of starvation ! the bad blood of the fierce cowards at home who egg on others to fight for the gratification of national vanity! All this makes money for me: I am never richer, never busier than when the papers are full of it. Well, it is your work to preach peace on earth and good will to men. Every convert you make is a vote against war. Yet I give you this money to hasten my own commercial ruin.
Barbara. Drunkenness and Murder! My God, why hast thou forsaked me?
However, Barbara's indignation does not last very long, any more than that of her aristocratic mother, Lady Britomart, who has no use for her plebeian husband except when she needs his money. Similarly Stephen, her son, has become converted, like Barbara, not to the Glory Hallelujah of the Salvation Army but to the power of money and cannon. Likewise the rest of the family, including the Greek Scholar Cusins, Barbara's suitor.
