People, I say. And after all, it's saying something. It's harder to
be a human being than to be a president or a bit of fluff. You can
be a president, or a bit of fluff, or even a nose, by clockwork.
Given a role, a PART, you can play it by clockwork. But you can't
have a clockwork human being.

We're dead sick of parts. It's no use your protesting that there is
a man behind the nose. We can't see him, and he can't see himself.
Nothing but nose. Neither can you make us believe there is a man
inside the gaiters. He's never showed his head yet.

It may be, in real life, the gaiters wear the man, as the nose wears
Cyrano. It may be Sir Auckland Geddes and Mr. J. H. Thomas are only
clippings from the illustrated press. It may be that a miner is a
complicated machine for cutting coal and voting on a ballot-paper.
It may be that coal-owners are like the _petit bleu_ arrangement, a
system of vacuum tubes for whooshing Bradburys about from one to the
other.

It may be that everybody delights in bits, in parts, that the public
insists on noses, gaiters, white rabbits, bits of fluff, automata and
gewgaws. If they do, then let 'em. Chu Chin Chow for ever!

In spite of them all: A People's Theatre. A People's Theatre shows
men, and not parts. Not bits, nor bundles of bits. A whole bunch of
roles tied into one won't make an individual. Though gaiters perish,
we will have men.

Although most miners may be pick-cum-shovel-cum-ballot implements,
and no more, still, among miners there must be two or three living