My
relations with her are purely telephonic, gramophonic, photophonic, and,
may I add, platonic.
THE ARCHBISHOP. There is no reason why you should be ashamed of them in
any case, Mr President. But let us look at the position impersonally.
Can you deny that what is happening is that the English people have
become a Joint Stock Company admitting Asiatics and Africans as
shareholders?
BARNABAS. Nothing like it. I know all about the old joint stock
companies. The shareholders did no work.
THE ARCHBISHOP. That is true; but we, like them, get our dividends
whether we work or not. We work partly because we know there would be no
dividends if we did not, and partly because if we refuse we are regarded
as mentally deficient and put into a lethal chamber. But what do we work
at? Before the few changes we were forced to make by the revolutions
that followed the Four Years War, our governing classes had been so
rich, as it was called, that they had become the most intellectually
lazy and fat-headed people on the face of the earth. There is a good
deal of that fat still clinging to us.
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