Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Major Barbara 139
motto is “Unashamed.” Since he refuses to hide from his conscience, he
can remain unashamed only by doing nothing shameful. His soul does not
need salvation because it is already strong and free.
Undershaft’s clear conscience is not enough to demonstrate an affinity
between father and daughter if all it means is that her conscience is strong
and healthy while his is dead or dying—if Barbara is a saint and Undershaft
a scoundrel. 4 If that is so then Barbara’s defeat does mean cynicism
and despair. Dramatically, the question is whether Barbara can accept the
cannon foundry and what it represents without compromising all that she
represents. The answer to this question lies in Undershaft’s “true faith of
an Armorer” and the mottoes of the seven successive Undershafts. Barbara
declares that there are no saints or scoundrels; she practices what Shaw
calls moral equality, and she espouses, by her actions, the Christian precept
to “judge not.” The Armorer’s faith is the logical extension of that rule.
The second Undershaft was explicit on this point: “ALL HAVE THE
RIGHT TO FIGHT: NONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE” (3: 168). The
Armorer’s faith still shocks and puzzles critics, although Shaw takes pains
to explain it in his preface. It is not a glorification of machismo and combat
for its own sake; it is the ultimate test of Barbara’s principles of moral
equality, an affirmation that you cannot divide the world into good people
and bad. Undershaft, like his daughter, is an ethical anarchist. He is not
necessarily a social anarchist, as we see both in his speech on social organization
to Stephen and, more significantly, the experiments in social cooperation
and community welfare he has created in Perivale St. Andrew.
Undershaft understands the need for social organization, but he also understands
that socialism must be founded on what Shaw called the “Anarchist
Spirit” (Impossibilities of Anarchism 23). The organization of civilization
must not outrage the consciences of its individual members.
Whenever it does, it will justify the “morality of militarism” and individualist
defiance that Undershaft represents. As Shaw observes, “the justification
of militarism is that circumstances may at any time make it the true
morality of the moment” (Preface 3: 50). The one true morality for each
man or woman, Undershaft maintains, is dependent on circumstances. His
own circumstances include a financial dependence on the manufacture of
arms, but all who find their consciences outraged by a social system that
methodically degrades and brutalizes large numbers of its citizens will find
that militarism must become their own true morality—if they have the
courage to face reality. “The consent of the governed” has been the accepted
foundation of our political theory for centuries, yet Undershaft’s