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Introduction
I wish to express my gratitude for certain good offices which
Augustus secured for me in January,1917. I had been invited to
visit the theatre of war in Flanders by the Commander-in-Chief:
an invitation which was, under the circumstances, a summons to
duty. Thus I had occasion to spend some days in procuring
the necessary passport and other official facilities for
my journey. It happened just then that the Stage Society gave a
performance of this little play. It opened the heart of every
official to me. I have always been treated with distinguished
consideration in my contracts with bureaucracy during the war;
but on this occasion I found myself persona grata in the highest
degree. There was only one word when the formalities were
disposed of; and that was "We are up against Augustus all day."
The showing-up of Augustus scandalized one or two innocent and
patriotic critics who regarded the prowess of the British army as
inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige. But our
Government departments knew better: their problem was how to win
the war with Augustus on their backs, well-meaning, brave,
patriotic, but obstructively fussy, self-important, imbecile, and
disastrous.
Save for the satisfaction of being able to laugh at Augustus in
the theatre, nothing, as far as I know, came of my dramatic
reduction of him to absurdity. Generals, admirals, Prime
Ministers and Controllers, not to mention Emperors, Kaisers and
Tsars, were scrapped remorselessly at home and abroad, for their
sins or services, as the case might be. But Augustus stood like
the Eddystone in a storm, and stands so to this day. He gave us
his word that he was indispensable and we took it.
Augustus Does His Bit was performed for the first time at
the Court Theatre in London by the Stage Society on the
21st January, 1917, with Lalla Vandervelde as The Lady, F.
B.J. Sharp as Lord Augustus Highcastle, and Charles Rock as
Horatio Floyd Beamish.
Content of Introduction [George Bernard Shaw's play: Augustus Does His Bit]
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