“Because civilization can’t afford to do that. It owes it to itself to help Germany.”
“I fully agree,” said Brandon.
“I entirely dissent,” said Pomfret, filling the glasses of his guests. “Germany by her own considered acts has put herself outside the comity of nations, and there’s no need to readmit her. She may lie down with the Magyar, the Turk and the Bulgar till the crack of doom. Civilization can do without Germany. The question is, can Germany do without civilization?”
“In spite of her errors and her crimes,” said Urban Meyer, “you do an injustice to a great people if you close all the doors against her.”
“We shall not agree about their greatness,” said Pomfret. “They are a race of barbarians, with a dangerous streak of madness.”
“That’s one side of the Teuton, I admit. But on the other he’s an idealist, a lover of the arts, an exemplary citizen. And the task of the future is to get him back to where he was. He’s got to return to the old ways. By the bye, that play has set me thinking.” Pomfret and Brandon exchanged glances, but Urban Meyer went on with a curious spontaneity, as if he were thinking aloud. “Yes, it has set my mind working. Last night I dreamed about it, and I believe if the Kingdom of Something Else could be presented just as I saw it in my dream it would speak to the real heart of Germany. It has the very spirit of her folk tales; it has the romance, the poetry, the music, the kindly people my childhood used to make and adore. And it teaches a gospel which might have a universal appeal. You know I’ve an immense belief in the theater. To me it’s the true church of the time to come. And I don’t see why the next world religion shouldn’t begin with a great play.”
Again Pomfret and Brandon exchanged glances.
“People ask what’s wrong with Christianity. Its great flaw to my mind is that it asks too much; it is sublime but it isn’t quite a working proposition. We won’t go into a tremendous argument, but there isn’t the slightest doubt that in its present form it doesn’t touch the crowd. It needs simplifying, modifying, humanizing, before it can get right home to the man in the street. A lot of old lumber and obsolete formulas will have to find their way to the scrap heap. The great truths can still be there, but the religion of the future has got to think more of this world and less of the next. And I’m by no means sure that the mind which conceived the idea of the Kingdom of the Something Else is not going to meet the deepest need of mankind at the present time.”
Brandon shot a glance of triumph at Pomfret, but even in that moment of exaltation he remembered the counsel of the sage.
“At the first opportunity I should like to put up that play in New York at my biggest theater. There would be an all-star cast and a special orchestra, and in every detail it would be absolutely the greatest production ever seen in the States or anywhere else.”