Still Standing on His Head.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19133, 17 October 1927, Page 10

Still Standing on His Head.

Years ago Mr Max Beerbohm drew a cartoon of a returned Englishman contemplating the inverted figure of MiBernard Shaw: "The dear fellow is " still standing on his head! " Mr Beerbohm may smile reflectively to-day at the spectacle of Mr Shaw coming to the rescue of Signor Mussolini. Although the letter Mr Shaw has written will stagger some of his admirers, the explanation clearly is his constitutional inability to go with any majority. Most Britons disapprove of Mussolini and his ways; Mr Shaw therefore speaks up for him. Indeed, to students of Mr Shaw's little perversities his letter *on Mussolini is full of ■interest. It is, of course, true that Mussolini has done much for Italy. Ho saved' it from Bolshevism, and Mr Shaw's parallel between him and Napoleon after the Terror must have occurred to many. But it is a little curious to find Mr Shaw, the anti-militarist, defending a military dictator. He says, too, that Mussolini sought no personal advantage. It may be conceded that Mussolini is a patriot, but surely power is "personal advantage"? Then Mr Shaw, apropos the Matteotti murder — which, by the way, was denounced the other day by a fellow British Socialist, Mr Arthur Henderson —drags in Thomas a Becket. Most people must think that the murder of Beokct was an "aurgment " against feudalism," but in any case morality has made some progress since then. Mr Shaw, appealing for "courtesy to a foreign statesman," would be more impressive •if he had himself shown courtjesy to the statesmen of his own country. But the trouble with so many internationalists is that charity not only does not begin at home; it never gets there.