The Man of Business

The Man of Business

A one-act play set in Washington on March 4, 1921, the day of the inauguration of the new President of the United States. The central figure is the outgoing President, Woodrow Wilson, depicted as a broken, physically infirm man who has just attended the ceremonial transfer of power with the support of his devoted secretary. The distant sounds of brass bands and celebratory drums filter into the room as Wilson settles painfully into a chair, strips off his gloves, and begins a long and searching conversation with his secretary about the nature of his political life, his failures, and his legacy. Wilson speaks with exhausted candor, reflecting on the collapse of his vision for a just and lasting peace following the Great War. He describes his experience at the Paris Peace Conference as a process of steady humiliation and isolation, in which he found himself politically outmaneuvered by European leaders who had no genuine interest in justice and who were bound to electoral promises of revenge and reparation. He singles out the secret treaties as a foundational problem, explaining that he had deliberately chosen not to learn of them in advance so as to remain uncompromised when he later articulated the principles of a fair peace. He acknowledges this as one of his gravest errors, a misplaced faith in the honour of those with whom he was negotiating. He describes being drawn into closed sessions, the doors shut against the public on the pretext of sparing defeated parties embarrassment, a concession which he came to see as the moment his opponents gained decisive leverage over him. With the Senate elections going against him and his mandate visibly expiring, the European powers knew his power was spent and waited him out. He recounts the temptation to speak the full truth publicly upon returning home, to declare plainly that the peace had been made dishonestly and that the victorious nations had chosen revenge over justice. He resisted this temptation, however, for one reason: the Covenant of the League of Nations had been extracted from the negotiations as what he considered the one potentially transformative instrument remaining from the wreckage. To preserve its credibility and argue for American ratification of the Treaty, he judged it necessary to refrain from publicly denouncing the whole settlement, even though this silence cost him something of his own integrity as he understood it. The failure of the United States Senate to ratify the Treaty is presented as the decisive catastrophe. Without American participation, the League's Covenant became, in Wilson's assessment, a one-sided and precarious mechanism, stripped of the authority it would have needed to function as a genuine instrument of international justice. He speaks of the Covenant not as an end in itself but as a means, an instrument through which the democratic voice of peoples might eventually override the calculations of governments and military powers, producing within a generation a workable international peace. Without America, that possibility collapsed. Wilson meditates more broadly on the nature of war itself, questioning whether any war can truly be conducted justly, even when the cause that prompted it is just. He argues that once a people enters war, something changes in the national character: hatred displaces justice, vengeance overtakes principle, and the very virtues of courage and sacrifice that make a nation's war effort admirable become the materials through which moral corruption deepens. He applies this analysis to America's own participation, noting the hardening of feeling, the cry for revenge, and the impossibility of speaking honestly once the nation was committed to combat. Toward the end of his conversation with his secretary, Wilson arrives at what he describes as the only real remedy: a change in human nature achieved through the acceptance that the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are not idealistic fantasy but a practical instrument of civilisation. He speaks of love and hatred as competing forces in the world, with fear accelerating hatred and slowing love, and expresses the belief that if fear could be overcome, love would prevail. The conversation is gently interrupted by the arrival of Wilson's wife, a calm and quietly authoritative presence who manages the domestic situation with composed affection, ensures that Wilson's medical instructions have been followed, and signals to the secretary that his visit must end. A telephone call from the new President inquiring after Wilson's health closes the scene, with Wilson responding graciously but privately wondering whether his own claim to be enjoying his freedom is actually true.

By Laurence Housman · Genre: Drama, Philosophical Fiction, Psychological Thriller · 9,258 words

First lines

Dramatis Persone JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN (_Ex-Minister_). JESSE COLLINS (_His Friend_). A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR. A NURSE.

SCENE: _Highbury. August 1913._

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The Man of Business is listed on Textopian as a play by Laurence Housman, dated Date unknown.

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drama · one-act play · British literature · early twentieth century · social satire · comedy · business · commerce · capitalism · middle-class society · morality · hypocrisy

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