If you raise hob now, it will not add to your popularity one whit. There is nothing but stage bombast to fight about. There is a little need of Capital for expansion, and of Labor for more bread, since he breeds fifty per cent. too fast. There is the hope of enlarging certain rooms in The World Inn to accommodate more strangers, or else of reducing the number of travellers who wish to sojourn therein. But you are not essential in the development of these designs, nor will they give you a good background for the acting of melodrama. You cannot shout “God and the right!” as you did in the days when you were popular and more or less necessary. To-day you are a bluff and we know it. So does your enemy, one Soul of Man, a personage as yet invisible to me, who may one day dissolve even my divine impudence into prudent beauty and make a hymnal out of my wit. With this thought I leave you. Look well before you leap, you heavy-weight. You may land in the trenches!
(Exit Flip)
MARS
He talks too much. I live for gallant deeds!
You fellows here were arguing with me
About my war. I will have your consent—
They would be cowards who would answer nay....
(Reenter Flip)
FLIP
Here is The Daily Bewilderer running headlines that will delight you, O Mars. Somebody has shot an arch-duke somewhere. Now, indeed, we shall be unable to hold you back! Now indeed we have fine cause for war!
LABOR AND CAPITAL
(going rapidly to Mars)
We are not cowards. We serve you, mighty Mars.