UNDERSHAFT. Quite so, quite so. But consider for a moment. Here I
am, a manufacturer of mutilation and murder. I find myself in a
specially amiable humor just now because, this morning, down at
the foundry, we blew twenty-seven dummy soldiers into fragments
with a gun which formerly destroyed only thirteen.

LOMAX [leniently] Well, the more destructive war becomes, the
sooner it will be abolished, eh?

UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. The more destructive war becomes the more
fascinating we find it. No, Mr Lomax, I am obliged to you for
making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it.
I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their
business in watertight compartments. All the spare money my trade
rivals spend on hospitals, cathedrals and other receptacles for
conscience money, I devote to experiments and researches in
improved methods of destroying life and property. I have always
done so; and I always shall. Therefore your Christmas card
moralities of peace on earth and goodwill among men are of no use
to me. Your Christianity, which enjoins you to resist not evil,
and to turn the other cheek, would make me a bankrupt. My
morality--my religion--must have a place for cannons and
torpedoes in it.

STEPHEN [coldly--almost sullenly] You speak as if there were half
a dozen moralities and religions to choose from, instead of one
true morality and one true religion.

UNDERSHAFT. For me there is only one true morality; but it might