I must remind the reader that this playlet was written when its
principal character, far from being a fallen foe and virtually a
prisoner in our victorious hands, was still the Caesar whose legions
we were resisting with our hearts in our mouths. Many were so horribly
afraid of him that they could not forgive me for not being afraid of
him: I seemed to be trifling heartlessly with a deadly peril. I knew
better; and I have represented Caesar as knowing better himself. But
it was one of the quaintnesses of popular feeling during the war that
anyone who breathed the slightest doubt of the absolute perfection of
German organization, the Machiavellian depth of German diplomacy, the
omniscience of German science, the equipment of every German with a
complete philosophy of history, and the consequent hopelessness
of overcoming so magnificently accomplished an enemy except by the
sacrifice of every recreative activity to incessant and vehement war
work, including a heartbreaking mass of fussing and cadging and bluffing
that did nothing but waste our energies and tire our resolution, was
called a pro-German.
Now that this is all over, and the upshot of the fighting has shown that
we could quite well have afforded to laugh at the doomed Inca, I am in
another difficulty. I may be supposed to be hitting Caesar when he is
down. That is why I preface the play with this reminder that when it
was written he was not down. To make quite sure, I have gone through the
proof sheets very carefully, and deleted everything that could possibly
be mistaken for a foul blow. I have of course maintained the ancient
privilege of comedy to chasten Caesar's foibles by laughing at them,
whilst introducing enough obvious and outrageous fiction to relieve both
myself and my model from the obligations and responsibilities of sober
history and biography. But I should certainly put the play in the fire
instead of publishing it if it contained a word against our defeated
enemy that I would not have written in 1913.
The Inca of Perusalem was performed for the first time in England by
the Pioneer Players at the Criterion Theatre, London, on 16th December,
1917, with Gertrude Kingston as Ermyntrude, Helen Morris as the
Princess, Nigel Playfair as the waiter, Alfred Drayton as the hotel
manager, C. Wordley Hulse as the Archdeacon, and Randle Ayrton as the
Inca.