Waste Part 17

CANTELUPE. Under public control?

TREBELL. Church colleges under Church control.

CANTELUPE. There'd be others?

TREBELL. To preserve the necessary balance in the schools.

CANTELUPE. Not founded with church money?

TREBELL. Think of the grants in aid that will be released. I must ask the Treasury for a further lump sum and with that there may be sufficient for secular colleges ... if you can agree with me upon the statutes of those over which you'd otherwise have free control.

TREBELL _is weighing his words._

CANTELUPE. "You" meaning, for instance ... what authorities in the Church?

TREBELL. Bishops, I suppose ... and others, [CANTELUPE _permits himself to smile._] On that point I shall be weakness itself and ... may I suggest ...

your seat in the cabinet will give you some control.

CANTELUPE. Statutes?

TREBELL. To be framed in the best interests of educational efficiency.

CANTELUPE. [_Finding an opening._] I doubt if we agree upon the meaning to be attached to that term.

TREBELL. [_Forcing the issue._] What meaning do you attach to it?

CANTELUPE. [_Smiling again._] I have hardly a sympathetic listener.

TREBELL. You have an unprejudiced one ... the best you can hope for. I was not educated myself. I learnt certain things that I desired to know ... from reading my first book--Don Quixote it was--to mastering Company Law. You see, as a man without formulas either for education or religion, I am perhaps peculiarly fitted to settle the double question. I have no grudges ... no revenge to take.

CANTELUPE. [_Suddenly congenial._] Shelton's translation of Don Quixote I hope ... the modern ones have no flavour. And you took all the adventures as seriously as the Don did?

TREBELL. [_Not expecting this._] I forget.

CANTELUPE. It's the finer att.i.tude ... the child's att.i.tude. And it would enable you immediately to comprehend mine towards an education consisting merely of practical knowledge. The life of Faith is still the happy one.

What is more crus.h.i.+ngly finite than knowledge? Moral discipline is a nation's only safety. How much of your science tends in support of the great spiritual doctrine of sacrifice!

TREBELL _returns to his subject as forceful as ever._

TREBELL. The Church has a.s.similated much in her time. Do you think it wise to leave agnostic science at the side of the plate? I think, you know, that this craving for common knowledge is a new birth in the mind of man; and if your church won't recognise that soon, by so much will she be losing her grip for ever over men's minds. What's the test of G.o.dliness, but your power to receive the new idea in whatever form it comes and give it life? It is blasphemy to pick and choose your good. [_For a moment his thoughts seem to be elsewhere._] That's an unhappy man or woman or nation ... I know it if it has only come to me this minute ... and I don't care what their brains or their riches or their beauty or any of their triumph may be ... they're unhappy and useless if they can't tell life from death.

CANTELUPE. [_Interested in the digression_] Remember that the Church's claim has ever been to know that difference.

TREBELL. [_Fastening to his subject again._] My point is this: A man's demand to know the exact structure of a fly's wing, and his a.s.sertion that it degrades any child in the street not to know such a thing, is a religious revival ... a token of spiritual hunger. What else can it be? And we commercialise our teaching!

CANTELUPE. I wouldn't have it so.

TREBELL. Then I'm offering you the foundation of a new Order of men and women who'll serve G.o.d by teaching his children. Now shall we finish the conversation in prose?

CANTELUPE. [_Not to be put down._] What is the prose for G.o.d?

TREBELL. [_Not to be put down either._] That's what we irreligious people are giving our lives to discover. [_He plunges into detail._] I'm proposing to found about seventy-two new colleges, and of course, to bring the ones there are up to the new standard. Then we must gradually revise all teaching salaries in government schools ... to a scale I have in mind. Then the course must be compulsory and the training time doubled--

CANTELUPE. Doubled! Four years?

TREBELL. Well, a minimum of three ... a university course. Remember we're turning a trade into a calling.

CANTELUPE. There's more to that than taking a degree.

TREBELL. I think so. You've fought for years for your tests and your atmosphere with plain business men not able to understand such lunacy. Quite right ... atmosphere's all that matters. If one and one don't make two by G.o.d's grace....

CANTELUPE. Poetry again!

TREBELL. I beg your pardon. Well ... you've no further proof. If you can't plant your thumb on the earth and your little finger on the pole star you know nothing of distances. We must do away with text-book teachers.

CANTELUPE _is opening out a little in spite of himself._

CANTELUPE. I'm waiting for our opinions to differ.

TREBELL. [_Businesslike again._] I'll send you a draft of the statutes I propose within a week. Meanwhile shall I put the offer this way. If I accept your tests will you accept mine?

CANTELUPE. What are yours?

TREBELL. I believe if one provides for efficiency one provides for the best part of truth ... honesty of statement. I shall hope for a little more elasticity in your dogmas than Becket or Cranmer or Laud would have allowed.

When you've a chance to re-formulate the reasons of your faith for the benefit of men teaching mathematics and science and history and political economy, you won't neglect to answer or allow for criticisms and doubts. I don't see why ... in spite of all the evidence to the contrary ... such a thing as progress in a definite religious faith is impossible.

CANTELUPE. Progress is a soiled word. [_And now he weighs his words._] I shall be very glad to accept on the Church's behalf control of the teaching of teachers in these colleges.

TREBELL. Good. I want the best men.

CANTELUPE. You are surprisingly inexperienced if you think that creeds can ever become mere forms except to those who have none.

TREBELL. But teaching--true teaching--is learning, and the wish to know is going to prevail against any creed ... so I think. I wish you cared as little for the form in which a truth is told as I do. On the whole, you see, I think I shall manage to plant your theology in such soil this spring that the garden will be fruitful. On the whole I'm a believer in Churches of all sorts and their usefulness to the State. Your present use is out-worn. Have I found you in this the beginnings of a new one?

CANTELUPE. The Church says: Thank you, it is a very old one.

TREBELL. [_Winding up the interview._] To be sure, for practical politics our talk can be whittled down to your accepting the secular solution for Primary Schools, if you're given these colleges under such statutes as you and I shall agree upon.

CANTELUPE. And the country will accept.

TREBELL. The country will accept any measure if there's enough money in it to bribe all parties fairly.

CANTELUPE. You expect very little of the constancy of my Church to her Faith, Mr. Trebell.

TREBELL. I have only one belief myself. That is in human progress--yes, progress--over many obstacles and by many means. I have no ideals. I believe it is statesmanlike to use all the energy you find ... turning it into the nearest channel that points forward.

CANTELUPE. Forward to what?