Another instance of indisputably justified suicide may be found in Mr.
Galsworthy's _Justice_. The whole theme of the play is nothing but the
hounding to his end of a luckless youth, who has got on the wrong side
of the law, and finds all the forces of society leagued against him. In
Mr. Granville Barker's _Waste_, the artistic justification for Trebell's
self-effacement is less clear and compulsive. It is true that the play
was suggested by the actual suicide, not of a politician, but of a
soldier, who found his career ruined by some pitiful scandal. But the
author has made no attempt to reproduce the actual circumstances of that
case; and even if he had reproduced the external circumstances, the
psychological conditions would clearly have eluded him. Thus the appeal
to fact is, as it always must be, barred. In two cases, indeed, much
more closely analogous to Trebell's than that which actually suggested
it--two famous cases in which a scandal cut short a brilliant political
career--suicide played no part in the catastrophe.
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