The Concord Players Present

Arms &
the Man

"...idealism, which is only a flattering name for romance in politics and morals, is as obnoxious to me as romance in ethics or religion ... I see plenty of good in the world working itself out as fast as the idealists will allow it; and if they would only let it alone and learn to respect reality ... we would all get along much better and faster. At all events I do not see moral chaos and anarchy as the alternative to romantic convention' and I am not going to pretend I do merely to please the people who are convinced that the world is held together only by the force of unanimous, strenuous, eloquent, trumpet-tongued lying. To me the tragedy and comedy of life lie in the consequences, sometimes terrible, sometimes ludicrous, of our persistent attempts to found our institutions on the ideals suggested to our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, instead of on a genuinely scientific natural history. And with that hint as to what I am driving at, I withdraw and ring up the curtain."

-- G. B. Shaw, Preface to Arms and the Man