The Prime Minister/Authors Note
AUTHOR'S NOTE
In the winter of 1910 or 1911 I was staying, for the silence and solitude which seemed necessary to certain literary work I had to do, at an old manor house turned into a private hotel in Sils Beseglia, near Sils Maria, a little village in the Engadine, lying midway on the mountain road between St. Moritz and Maloja, at the foot of a glacier and in the midst of the deep snows. My few housemates were all Germans, being chiefly muscular and adventurous German women, who spent most of their time ski-ing along the neighbouring slopes in not altogether becoming male costume. One afternoon I heard from my sitting-room the tinkle of many sleigh-bells, and looking out I saw, in the glistening Engadine sunshine, some three or four sleighs rolling up the deep snow-ruts to the half-buried gate of the house. They contained a group of illustrious personages, with several of whom I had such slight acquaintance as one usually acquires (whatever different world one comes out of) in the course of long sojourns at small hotels in remote places. As far as I can remember, there were, among others, the Princess Stéphanie of Belgium; her second husband, the Hungarian nobleman whom she married after the death of her first husband, the Crown Prince of Austria; the Archduke Franz Ferdinand
and his wife; a little Austrian baroness who was
lady-in-waiting, and (I think, but am not sure) one
of the younger sons of the Kaiser, whom I had
frequently seen in the same company. They had
sleighed over from St. Moritz and were to go back
after tea.
Knowing I was staying in the house the Princess kindly sent up to ask me to join her party, and going downstairs I found the rather large company in the timbered hall by the side of a crackling wood fire, seated in the manner of country folk about a big pine tea-table. My recollections of that tea-party centre in the impression left on my dramatic sense by the contrast and, as subsequent events show, the conflict of family relations and dynastic interests. There was the Archduke, a stiff-set, stolid, gloomy, not very inspiring person, commonly understood to be intensely hostile to England and France, and closely bound to Germany and the person of the Kaiser. And there was the brighter and more expansive Belgian Princess, daughter of the late King and cousin of the present one. If the war came which was even then, threatening (it was mentioned that afternoon, I remember, that Austria had eight hundred thousand men under arms) and Germany carried out the intention that was being openly avowed by her military writers, of marching over Belgium to get at France, what would happen to the members of that family group? How would they stand to each other in the tragic developments of the plots and counterplots that are the chief industries of what Mr. Gerard calls "the King business." In particular, how would the daughter of Belgium stand to the Archduke if he became Emperor of Austria (as it seemed he might at any moment) and carried out with the Kaiser the schemes with which he was credited by whispered rumour and report? They were apparently united and harmonious now, laughing and chatting and calling each other by their Christian names and diminutives, but it needed no special development of the dramatic sense to hear under the crackle of cup and saucer the murmur of the voiceless millions of Europe, whose lives lay so lightly in the hands of this little party taking tea together in the snow-covered house among the mountains.
Next morning I awoke early with the drama of that tea-party strongly on my mind, but, by a process which imaginative writers will recognize as not unfamiliar, the scenes and characters had undergone important changes during the hours of sleep. The Archduke had become the Prime Minister of England; his palace at Konopisht had become No. 10 Downing Street; the daughter of King Leopold had become the daughter of a German doctor practising in Soho, and the long-expected war had begun. My imaginary German girl, inspired by racial hatred, and smarting under a deep sense of personal injury, had found a way, under a false name and character, of entering the house of the Prime Minister in order to destroy him, and through him, his country. But being in that house, she could not get out of it. Fate had laid its hand upon her. She had fallen into her own trap. Her hate of hates had gone down before the stirrings of another (and apparently unrequitable) passion. And after her soul had become denationalized, and she had rightly convinced herself that, like some of the highest ladies of the land, she was a true and loyal Englishwoman and a member of the "empire of humanity," she, who had come to destroy the Prime Minister, remained to save him, and so, by a great and moving act of self-sacrifice, to bring nearer the day of peace.
This sequel to the foreshadowed tragedy of the tea-party took such hold of me that I had to put aside the work on which I was engaged and go on forthwith with the drama which had shaped itself, so that within six or seven days, working continuously and feverishly, I had written the first draft of a play in four acts. But having got the subject off my mind, I put the manuscript among many similar papers in my bag, and thought no more about it for fully three years. Then the war began, and in the earliest days of it I availed myself of the friendly acquaintance I have enjoyed through many years with the present Prime Minister (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) to go down to breakfast with him, in order to ask if there was any way (such as by propaganda) in which a man who was too old for military duty, but was not unknown abroad, might be of service to his country. At that breakfast (no one else being present except a fellow-author) the Prime Minister told a thrilling story—the story, which I trust I have not done wrong in making public already, of the Cabinet on the day of the Ultimatum, waiting in Mr. Asquith's room for the answer that was expected from Berlin before midnight, but overlooking the difference between mid-European time and Greenwich time, so that Great Britain was an hour at war before the country was aware of it. Listening to that story, told on the spot in the Prime Minister's vivid way, I remembered my play and thought, "That's my Prologue." Then I looked up my manuscript and wrote my drama over again, feeling that I had only touched the fringe of a great subject. And quite lately I have again rewritten it, out of that deep sense of the significance of war which none of us can know until we have gone through the pain and throb of it.
Why The Prime Minister has not been produced in London before is a long story. It may be sufficient to say that the chief impediment was the difficulty of finding, among our many accomplished actresses, a woman who at once by her personality and training seemed to the author to meet precisely the needs of the trying situation in which he had placed his principal character. That difficulty disappeared when I saw Miss Ethel Irving in Brieux' Three Daughters of M. Dupont, and now I can only hope I have given her material as worthy of her genius.
One word more. Looking round the theatres one sees that the class of entertainment most in vogue at present is that which combines bright music, bright faces, and beautiful dresses, with cheerful story and heartsome laughter. That is no doubt just as it should be, while a considerable part of the public to be catered for consists of our young soldiers on leave from the grey life of the trenches. Nothing could be better for them, and perhaps nothing else so good. But there is another part of the public who live at home, and have to face bereavement and the strain of ever-renewed and increasing self-sacrifice if we are to endure to the end of this grim business. Is it too much to assume that this public (a very large one) asks in the theatre, as elsewhere, for the food that aims, however humbly, to strengthen the muscles of its soul, to lift up its heart, and exalt its hope that after so much suffering the world may win through to a joyful peace?
Easter 1918