The theme of the play is the protest of an upper-class statesman against a war of conquest with a small nation in which his country is engaged. His wife and family are all normally patriotic and his stand estranges them. His governmental position is lost, as is also his parliamentary membership. Sir Stephen More makes a magnificent stand for his ideal. His courage and consistency result in his death at the hands of the victory-drunken mob. And yet,--I was left cold. It must have been my realization of the futility of his cause which killed my warmth; and yet I am an admirer of forlorn hopes and their leaders. It was, perhaps, more the artificiality of his espousement of peace, and the grounds for this espousement, which failed to move me. To begin with, More belongs to the class which really benefits by war: the monied, aristocratic and governing class. To such people patriotism is a natural and inevitable source of action, as it is rooted in their very substantial stake in the country. Love of the fatherland, which has given them so much, and the duty of fighting its wars, or of encouraging others to fight them, is a very vital and vigorous thing in them. Against this, More had nothing to advance but a very negative propaganda: an appeal to the strong to act "honorably" by pitying and sparing the weak (a perfectly sickening reason); and the invoking of a hazy abstract idea of "justice" which has about as much power to influence men's actions as a policeman has to maintain morality. More was a member of the imperial class; and he became a "Little Englander." He was a member of a soldierly class; and he became an advocate of peace for peace's sake. He opposed a cloudy concept of conduct,--utterly unrelated to the facts of life,--to a deep-rooted instinct founded on the material benefit of his own class. And this was the reason of his failure. He had nothing grippingly affirmative to give the people, and he should have realized that to appeal to the rulers was hopeless. A great, popular, full-blooded thing like war must have a great, popular, full-blooded thing to counteract it. Also, we must remember that the life of the masses of people is not such a beautiful and colored thing that death on the battle-field is such a very dreadful alternative. Painting the horrors of war,--its sordid and unheroic side,--is not enough. Nothing could be more sordid and unheroic than the gray existence of the factory hand. A new, full gospel of affirmation, revolt, and militancy must be set against the war-passion. The spirit of conflict is good; it is essential to continuity; it is the breaker of old forms and the releaser of new life. It can, however, be directed along newer and more gainful channels than that of international market-struggles.