George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

The Mad Election
Happy were the fools and the thoughtless men of action in
those days. The worst of it was that the fools were very strongly
represented in parliament, as fools not only elect fools, but
can persuade men of action to elect them too. The election
that immediately followed the armistice was perhaps the mad-
dest that has ever taken place. Soldiers who had done volun-
tary and heroic service in the field were defeated by persons
who had apparently never run a risk or spent a farthing that
they could avoid, and who even had in the course of the elec-
tion to apologize publicly for bawling Pacifist or Pro-German
at their opponent. Party leaders seek such followers, who can
always be depended on to walk tamely into the lobby at the
party whip’s orders, provided the leader will make their seats
safe for them by the process which was called, in derisive ref-
erence to the war rationing system, “giving them the coupon.”
Other incidents were so grotesque that I cannot mention them
without enabling the reader to identify the parties, which would
not be fair, as they were no more to blame than thousands of
others who must necessarily be nameless. The general result
was patently absurd; and the electorate, disgusted at its own
work, instantly recoiled to the opposite extreme, and cast out
all the coupon candidates at the earliest bye-elections by equally
silly majorities. But the mischief of the general election could
not be undone; and the Government had not only to pretend
to abuse its European victory as it had promised, but actually
to do it by starving the enemies who had thrown down their
arms. It had, in short, won the election by pledging itself to be
thriftlessly wicked, cruel, and vindictive; and it did not find it
as easy to escape from this pledge as it had from nobler ones.
The end, as I write, is not yet; but it is clear that this thought-
less savagery will recoil on the heads of the Allies so severely
that we shall be forced by the sternest necessity to take up our
share of healing the Europe we have wounded almost to death
instead of attempting to complete her destruction.

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GB Shaw