LABORS’ CAPACITY TO RULE

Evening Star, Issue 17319, 6 April 1920, Page 6

LABORS’ CAPACITY TO RULE

G. B. SHAW ON GOVERNING- QLASSES. POLITICAL SNOBS AND IGNORAMUSES. A ‘Sunday Chronicle’ representative, happening upon Mr Bernard Shaw unexpectedly in Margate recently, where has was watching the pantomime with an expression of concentrated gloom, asked him what he thought of Mr Winston Churchill’s declaration that the Labor -Party is incapable of the burden of Government. Mr Shaw's melancholy instantly vanished, and ho turned from the pantomime to politics with evident relief. “ Of course the Labor Party are incapable of Government,” he's-aitl; ‘‘but what extraordinarily had taste on Churchill's part to raise tho question of capacity in this country ! Hang it all, you do not mention ropes in the house of a person whose father has been hanged. 11 IVhen it comes to government, we nre a!! in the position of the man who was asked canid he play the fiddle. He said he had no doubt he could if lie tried. I never yet met or hoard of an Englishman of any class who ever dreamt of its being necessary to learn how to govern. They just go into the Cabinet and do it. “As it is not by any means certain that our civilisation, wounded desperately in the last five years, and in a very poor state of health before that, will recover and survive, our plan cannot be called a decisive success; but we have no other plan. “Air Churchill, when the next election comes, will speak for Coalition candidates — or whatever h's party may be then—right and loft; but he will never ask whether one of them knows as much political science a.s his eai. He will advise the electorate to vote for a callow college pas-man who know? less of the world than an office boy of one year’s standing. “He will call on them to save the Empire by returning some profiteer who has never tried to do anythuig in his life but make money for himself, and who wants to get into Parliament solely to protect his own commercial interests. Ho has never yet said pubbely to any political postulant' of bis own class or of his own particular color. ‘What are your qualifications?*—no doubt because the reply, if truthful, would mostly be ‘ None.’ “But now he rashly ask? that question of Mr Henderson, of Mr Smillio. of Mr Sidney Webb, and rhe rest of them. Id is xsaiiv like his cheek. “If it conics to that, what are his own qualification?P An education wh : ch became obsolete on Boswortb Field, ami before that was -only the technic?.! training of a- robber baron! A social tradition which cuts him off from friendly intercourse and intermarriage with nineteen-twentieths of his fellow-countrymen! An income winch rentiers him incagibla of even imagining what life mean? to the millions of people who couM not afford to buy the ‘Sunday Chronicle’ if it cost 6dl An undisguised sympathy with ancient tyrannies in the present Euiqpean struggle and an openly violent bosiiluy to their opponents. hy in the name of common sense should wo assume that all this qualifies him to govern better than men who have earned (heir living like the vast maiority of their fellow?, who have won their position instead fa being born to it, and whose proposals for tho Peace Treaty arenovy proved to have been far more enlightened than the impossible and ruinous division of the spoils which was Mr Churchill’s colleagues could do at- VerFaille.sP What man. living in such a glass house woii,d start stone-throwing if ~he had a scrap of pohheal sense? ->o, it will not do. IVe are all equally amateurs m government, and tiny man. or party, pretending to be any bettor is either a humbug or a walking monument of inconsiderate selt-sat isfaction.” “lykat phrase, Mr Shaw!" “Call it ‘Snob,’ if you prefer it shorter. Uur governing classes are sometimes quite nice people personally; but politically they are snobs and ignoramuses. They have iiiou.catcd an overwhelming public oninian that wording is low - and dishonorable’, and that fighting is _ obligatory and glorious. it ■ tneir id’ers, millionaires and an. mto the trenches without an Art of 1 arliament by sheer force of conviction, ine only party that- interests me is the party that will force their idlers, and all if, , ■"■••aLwever, by the same irresistible picture, into the places where -people work, and wao w;l, understand—as Sir Keynes, for mHauee, understands—that modern civilisath!m-| Cannot afford vars > and cannot survive doa ’ t l care Mr Churchill calls that Gtariv ? abor • p3rt T. Bolshevik Party, it hj u t. < ’ on H >lra °y. or what he pleases; to l-i b ° r/ rty ' ,Mde ' s will have to be politically self-educated, because o e £ v offlcial 9 in such viewl at y if an y w . here ffii the world; but at least self-education ia better than no education and far better than miseducetion that dears-’ 0 SCh °° “ niveraii y “■>»• Is 4^«pSly. tbe ‘ SUn<iay his retreat-fnv'term' after a?* and