The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 1934, SHAW AND SUNSHINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 11, 13 January 1934, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 1934, SHAW AND SUNSHINE.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the v>rong that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do

Feeling, like the ex-soldier in Mr. Kipling's poem who cherished memories of the South African spaces, That the sunshine of England ifl pale, And the breezes of England are stale, And there's something gone small with the lot, Mr. Bernard Shaw is about to "trek South" and pay us a visit. The compliment appears to be addressed more to our climate than to our butter and wool, our political institutions, or our scenery, but we will accept it gratefully, for Mr. Shaw is George Bernard Shaw, England's most famous figure to-day, a dramatist and philosopher whose lightest words —and some of them are very light—go to the uttermost ends of the earth. If he is making a round trip in the vessel in which he arrives, he will not have time to study our life at all fully, but if he is the same "G. 8.5." that will not put a brake on his tongue or dull •its edge. While we await his arrival we may even speculate —adopting the well-known attitude of inversion—as to what he will say. Will we be the least British of Dominions? Mr. Shaw's coming, however, has an interest beyond his own eminence. It draws attention to the fact that among statesmen, publicists and writers of various kinds a visit to the Dominions is the exception rather than the rule. Mr. Shaw himself has travelled widely in Europe, he recently made a tour to the East, and two years ago he went to South Africa, but his wanderings have not been equal to his opportunities. Mr. H. G'. Wells, Mr. G. K. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc have little personal knowledge of the outer Empire. Unfortunately this lack of knowledge does not always prevent Eoglish writers from laying down the law about the Dominions. John Morley ridiculed the idea of the colonies fighting for the independence of Belgium. Mr. Chesterton disliked Imperialism so much that some years before the Great War he penned this very remarkable passage:

TJie English are above all a poetical and optimistic people; and therefore their Empire is something vague and yet sympathetic, something distant and yet dear. But this dream of theirs of being powerful in the uttermost places, though a native weakness, is still a weakness in them; much more of a weakness than gold was to Spain or glory to Napoleon. If ever we were in collision with our real brothers and rivals we should leave all this fancy out of account. We should no more dream of pitting Australian armies against German than of pitting Tasmanian sculpture against French.

Seldom have subsequent events shattered a downright opinion so completely. One may recall John Bright's famous remark that the worst of great thinkers is that they so often think wrong. It is hard to believe that Mr. Chesterton would have written like this if he had read Australian history and seen Australia for himself. The passage indeed leaves us with the horrid suspicion that when he wrote this Mr. Chesterton may have thought Australia was peopled by blacks.

The trouble with Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc and their school in this direction is that they think of Imperialism almost entirely in terms of conquest and subjection. They have little or no thought for the great selfgoverning communities under the flag, for the romance of their history and the mass and quality of their achievement. There are many in -what may be called the official 'and governing classes who, while they do not share their views about Imperialism, are equally uninterested in the Dominions. To these Englishmen the Empire is India and the Crown Colonies. The reasons for this are that the political connection between England and India and the Crown Colonies is much more direct and personal, that these particular parts of the Empire furnish careers in the Army and the Civil Service, and that Englishmen who serve there are birds of passage that return to England for their holidays and mean to settle there when their work is done. Moreover, India presents a series of problems to British statesmanship and the British genius for government that happily can be found in none of the Dominions. So colonials find that interest in the affairs of the Dominions is often less keen than they expected. They are astonished sometimes not only at this lack of interest, but at the ignorance displayed among well-educated Englishmen, and they are irritated by the assumption that colonial life is still so much in the pioneer stage and so provincial in its outlook as to be worth little notice. "No , one in London in these clays distinguished between Australia, and New Zealand," says Mr. Arthur Jose, the EnglishAustralian historian and essayist, writing of Arthur Adams' early work, "and few do so even now." The most astonishing mistakes continue to be made, as in an article on" Auckland in a recent-English encyclopaedia, which assigns to us nearly every product under the sun except butter. This attitude might be corrected to some extent if more writers and statesmen —arrived and on the way—visited the Dominions and took the trouble —as some of them do —to examine our conditions and understand our aspirations. It is true that the more eminent a man becomes, the more difficult it is for him to break away from his ties for any length of time, but if there is a will there is generally a way. Fortunately it looks as if quite a stream of distinguished visitors was starting to flow, for in addition to Mr. Shaw we are due to receive Major Douglas, Krishnamurti, Mr. Hugh Walpole, and Evangeline Booth. The least result that we may reasonably expect from this influx of genius and talent in its reactions abroad is that fewer people in England will suppose that we live exclusively on damper and tea, and that more of them will understand that Auckland is not a mere suburb of Sydney. i