PRINCESS: Why should we patch this pirate up again?
Why should you always win and win in vain?
Bid him not cut the leg but cut the loss.
SAINT GEORGE: I will not fire upon my own red cross.
PRINCESS: If you lay there, would he let you escape?
SAINT GEORGE: I am his conqueror and not his ape.
DOCTOR: Be not so sure of conquering. He shall rise
On lighter feet, on feet that vault the skies.
Science shall make a mighty foot and new,
Light as the feather feet of Perseus flew,
Long as the seven leagued boots in tales gone by,
This shall bestride the sea and ride the sky.
Thus shall he fly, and beat above your nation
The clashing pinions of Apocalypse,
Ye shall be deep sea fish in pale prostration
Under the sky foam of his flying ships.
When terror above your cities, dropping doom,
Shall shut all England in a lampless tomb,
Your widows and your orphans now forlorn
Shall be no safer than the dead they mourn.
When all their lights grow dark, their lives grow gray,
What will those widows and those orphans say?
SAINT GEORGE: Saint George for Merrie England.
He saw the aeroplanes in vision and he saw courage and patriotism. I think he must rejoice today that betrayal of the allied cause has not been at the hands of an Englishman. He had said many hard things about the English aristocracy and gentry: but these two virtues he had always granted were theirs. And in his vision he saw hope:
England may soon be poor enough to be praised with an undivided heart. We are not sure that the ruins of Wembley may not be the restoration of Westminster. It is when a nation has recovered from the illusion of owning everything that it discovers that it does stand for something; and for that something it will fight with a lucid and just tenacity which no mere megalomania can comprehend. We are not so perverse as to wish to see England ruined that she may be respected. But we do think she will be happy in having the sort of respect that could remain even if she were ruined. Patriotic as the English have always been, the patriotism of their educated class has seldom had this peculiar sort of extra energy that is given by a conscience completely at rest. If that were added, they might well make such a stand as would astound the world. All their other virtues, their humour and sporting spirit and freedom from the morbidities and cruelties of fatigue, might enter into their full heritage when joined to the integrity and intellectual dignity that belong to self defence and self respect. We are far from sure that the world has not yet to see our nation in its finest phase.
What may be in the womb of night we know not, nor what are those dim outlines that show on the horizon.