Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1931. MR. SHAW SEES RED

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 30, 4 August 1931, Page 4

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1931. MR. SHAW SEES RED

Mr. Bernard Shaw, who under normal conditions can play the fool as cleverly as any man in Europe, found the conditions in Moscow so abnormal thai he made an egregious ass of himself—which is not quite the same thing. Yet all the silly—and, if it were possible to take such cheap and clumsy clowning seriously, we might have to add wicked—nonsense with which he deluged his Bolshevik admirers had so far from exhausted his supply that there was plenty left to mark Ids return to that much less desirable country which he is fortunately unable to claim as his native land. The Russian Government had done the versatility of its honoured guest a serious injustice when the warm welcome extended to him through its newspapers was qualified by the warning thai Mr.' Shaw was not, a thoroughgoing Socialist and might fail to., understand what was going on in Eussia.A few years ago the ambiguity of his attitude had indeed given ground for doubt. On the seventh anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution he had accepted M. Rakowsky's invitation to Chesham House, where the Red Flag was over all, and Lenin's photograph, swathed in red drapery, was in every room. • Mr. Shaw was apparently just as proud as. liis friend, Mr. H. G. Wells, to .show that he was not afraid to appear in these strange- surroundings, hut shortly afterwards the soundness of his'faith, like that of Mr. Wells," fell under suspicion.- • ' ' • • , The occasion to which •we refer was a few weeks after Mr. Baldwin, having won the General Election of 1924; with the help of the Zinovieff letter, had taken office for the second time. Both M. Trotsky and M. Zinovieff had spoken with contempt of the mild Socialism of the first MacDonald Government, and Mr. Shaw took up the cudgels on its behalf in a letter to the "Izvestia." Of Trotsky, whom a few weeks ago he canonised with incredible absurdity as a sort of male Saint Joan, in his day, who has not been, burnt, he had on that occasion nothing to say, but he gravely warned Zinovieff that he must chooso definitely between serious statesmanship and cinematographic school-boy nonsense. . As Zinovieff has since fallen from grace, this contemptuous. criticism was not calculated to mar the warmth of Mr. Shaw's reception in Moscow, but it was unfortunately generalised so as to include the rest of the Soviet Hierarchy by the reference to a dozen of the most negligible cranks in Bussia . . . corresponding with similar. people in England, both convinced that they are. the proletariat. It is in their application, not to;»M. Zinovieff. or any other 'Russian leader,-but to one who in practical affairs may be aptly described as one of the most negligible of British cranks, that these extracts from Mr. Shaw's "Izvestia" letter are of interest to-day. .. ;' ' i In the deferred message' which Sve published a week ago, Mr. Shaw's reception in Moscow .was described as follows:— ■'~ A brass band and guard of honour supplemented the welcome of a crowd of several thousands, which gaye1 a mighty shout of "Hail, Shaw," when the dramatist arrived at Alexandrbvsky station. The dramatist, smiling happily, waved his hat in joyous abandon, as he faced a delegation of Soviet authors, officials, reporters, and photographers. Mr. Shaw and Lady Asior visited Lenin's tomb and the Kremlin,' where Mr. Shaw was photographed astride 'ft Napoleonic cannon. <■, Mr. Shaw's sublime confidence in his superiority to, Shakespeare may well have been so strengthened as to bring his head nearer to the stars than ever under the spell of that glorious reception. It is safe to say'that the air.of Bankside or Stratford-on-Avon was never rent by an equally mighty shout of "Hail, Shakespeare!" We see only two grounds for cavil. What bad management brought in Lady Astor to mar the harmony of the British delegation? There may ,he some compensation when she tellsjus what she thought of it, and how she enjoyed the birthday oratory with a freedom that might' have had unpleasant consequences on Russian soil. And why was the "Alexandrovsky station" selected as the scene of such a thrilling inter-proletarian ceremony? Is it possible that a land which has changed Petrograd into Leningrad, and foully murdered the last of its Tsars, has allowed die name of another of them to desecrate for nearly fourteen years after its emancipation one of the principal stations of its capital? We suggest that a change of the name to St. Bernardovski would remove a blot from the escutcheon of Bolshevism and fitly commemorate the great event of Sunday week. But apart from these trifling: cavils the proceedings both at the] railway station and in the Hall f of Columns seem to have been exactly j what they should have been. The. brass band, the Red Guarded honour,, the cheering crowds, the- proud'

dramatist smiling happily and waving his hat "in joyous abandon," the "delegation of Soviet authors, officials, reporters, and photographers," the dedication to more solemn thoughts at the tomb of Lenin and in-the ■ Kremlin, and the ultimate photograph of the-hero in a pose recalling doubtless to some Napoleon himself, and to others the least sophisticated type of American tourist, "astride a Napoleonic cannon"—it is indeed a beautiful and inspiring picture, and there is not a single detail that we could willingly have missed. Yet the mind perversely recurs to that grave warning which Mr. Shaw gave to Zinovieff in the letter we have quoted: Ho must choose definitely T>et\veeu. serious statesmanship and cinematographic school-boy nonsense. Seven years later, on the eve of his departure for Moscow, it fell to Mr. Shaw to make the same choice. On which of these alternatives did it fall? If his decision was in favour of "cinematographic school-boy nonsense," he must be admitted to have achieved his ideal with a thoroughness rarely given to mortal man. There were evidently no brass bands or Red Guards or cheering crowds to honour Mr. Shaw on his return to London, and to a cinema star the contrast must have been very disappointing. But he got a good audience nevertheless for the message he had brought back with him. It is all, silly nonsense about Russia's being a failure, he said. On ±ho whole I.should advise young men to go to Enssia and settle there. Judging from the unsettling effect which "the experience has had on' Mr. Shaw; himself, we should, on the whole, strongly advise all old men to stay away.