dKrsmttg fnst SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1930.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 41, 16 August 1930, Page 8

dKrsmttg fnst SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1930.

FILIAL PIETY

The interesting controversy between Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Rev. J. C. Carlile, which was reported in a London message on Tuesday, is one from which neither party can be said to have emerged with credit. Mr. Shaw had committed what most people would have no hesitation in condemning as an unpardonable outrage, but his critic's attack was in part sufficiently maladroit to provide so expert a dialectician with a very good smoke-screen. In the preface to what is called "a private edition of his works," but is evidently not so private as to be protected from public criticism, Mr. Shaw describes his father as a miserable drunkard, invariably leaving parties which he attended scandalously drunk. It was a strange filial tribute, well calculated to startle and shock even those who are proof against the normal extravagances of Mr. Shaw's most irresponsible and impish moods. In Russia, where everything has been Bolshevised and all the conventions and most of the decencies of life have been turned upside down, or in China, where filial piety was formerly one of the mainstays of society, and ancestor-worship one of its curses, but good and bad alike have lately been subjected to the same topsyturvy process, such a tribute from son to father is doubtless among the commonplaces of life. But in Britain even those who had supposed that Mr. Shaw had passed the limit long ago must now see that they were mistaken. At the age of 74 an ordinary man would have known better, but not so Mr. Shaw. For pulpit purposes, however, Mr. Shaw's performance was admirably adapted, and the Rev. J. C. Carlile made a good start when he said that the preface would be remembered as immortalising tho failures of Mr. Shaw's father. He might well have added that it would be remembered as immortalising one of the most grievous of the son's failures also. The skeleton is taken out of the family cupboard and shown in all its nakedness, the preacher proceeded. It is a pity that the dramatist did not remember the Latin tag about speaking well of the dead. No doubt all that Mr. Shaw says about the old man's drunken habits is perfectly true, but it is not chivalrous to, bring him back from the dead to exhibit his nastiness as an excuse for hia son's rudeness. "Chivalrous" is surely a strange epithet in such a context. "Gallant, honourable, courteous" are the least unsuitable of the dictionary meanings, but none of them quite fits. Chivalry is a quality which sons rarely have the opportunity of showing towards their father, especially after his death. But decency we have a right to expect at all times, and after his death a decent regard for his memory. From other sons we might also expect what in the American Declaration of Independence is called "a decent respect to die opinions of mankind," but not from Mr. Shaw. A defiant disrespect for the opinions of mankind has-indeed for him, as for Socrates, supplied the starting-point and the impulse of his service to his generation. It is, however, to be regretted that respect for himself did not induce him to resist that ruling passion. Amending his critic's phrase, we may say that it was not decent to bring the old man back from the dead and make a guy of him, or even an awful example. But the Rev. Mr. Carlile's serious blunder is in the emphasis which he lays upon death, as though it touched the essence of Mr. Shaw's offence. It is a pity, he says, that the dramatist did not remember the Latin tag about speaking well of the dead. This grossly abused and in the present case largely irrelevant Latin tag, "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum," had a curious origin in Greek legislation. They greatly commend another lawe of Solon's, says Plutarch in North's translation, which forbiddeth to speako ill of the dead. For it is a good and godly thing to thinlce that they ought not to touche the dead, no more than to touche holy things: and men should take greate heede to offende those that are departed out of this world, besides it is a token of wisedome and civillitie, to beware of immortall enemies. The details and the circumstances of this legislation are unknown, but it may be presumed to have been designed in a small, excitable, and quarrelsome community to prevent the slandering of the recently dead to the scandal of their living descendants and friends. The need for such a law in England was freely canvassed three years ago, when Gladstone's memory was the subject of an abominable libel, for which only indirectly and accidentally was his son able to find an indequatc legal remedy. The uses of the Latin tag have wandered far from the purposes of its Greek original. As a legislator Solon was compelled to proceed in the negative by prohibiting the slandering of the dead, but the Latin precept, "Nothing concerning the dead except good," which really means "if

you cannot say anything good about the dead, say nothing," has been given in modern practice the unfortunate'positive turn of justifying any lies about the dead as long as they are ■flattering. In pursuance of this deplorable tendency obituary eulogy has ! almost lost its meaning in the United [ States Congress, and it is heading in I the same direction in our own Parliament. In his unguarded reference to "the Latin tag about speaking well of the dead" as though he approved of this practice, the Rev. Mr. Carlile not only gave his agile antagonist an excellent opening, but himself lost sight of the essence of the case. Even in its strictest application the precept extends to the dead, or the recently dead, an immunity from the criticism which would be legitimately extended to the living. To plead for the dead on this ground is to imply that the criticism would have been legitimate if they had been alive, and in this case Mr. Carlile expressly admits that the allegation of drunken habits is "perfectly true." Yet if he had not be'en misled by the specious sentiment of his Latin tag he must have seen that, so far from being legitimate or less illegitimate if the old man had been alive, the charge would in that event have been a good deal worse. Even Mr. Shaw would surely have refrained from publicly and in cold blood branding his father as an habitual drunkard while his father was there to feel the sting and the shame of the charge. The essence of Mr. Shaw's indecency is not that he libelled a dead man but that he libelled his father.

As we have indicated, Mr. Shaw takes advantage of his critic's tacticar blunder to get away from the point. Indeed, he gets several centuries away from it when he asks:—

Would Mr. Carlile say anything disparaging about Henry VIII. or bloody Queen Mary if ho were preaching about them?

What Queen Mary thought and said about Henry VIII. would be more to the point than what the Rev. Mr. Carlile thinks about either of them. To the ambition and the lusts of her father, and the change of religion and policy which they in large measure inspired, Mary owed a life and a reign of misery, and what she thought of him is not beyond all conjecture. But she was by no means so black as she has been painted, and we should be very much surprised if she ever publicly paraded the vices of her father as an excuse for her own failings. Though Mr. Shaw is pleased to accept the popular tradition of "Bloody Mary," she had a heart and a sense of decency which are not conspicuous in his latest performance.