BERNARD SHAW

Evening Star, Issue 20862, 4 August 1931, Page 11

BERNARD SHAW

TO THE EDITOR, Sir,—Few modern writers and thinkers are further apart in ideas, outlook, and aims than (1. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. The former has written in his generous study of Shaw: “ He is a man who could have enjoyed

art among the artists. . . . Ho has instead laboured in a mill of statistics and crammed his mind with all the mostdreary and most filthy details, so that he can argue on the spur of the moment about sowing machines or sewage, about typhus fever, or twopenny tubes. The usual mean theory of motives will not cover the case; it is not ambition, lor he could have been twenty times more prominent as a plausible and popular humorist. It is the real and ancient emotion of the sains populi, almost extinct in our oligarchical chaos; nor will I for one, as I pass on to matters of argument or quarrel, neglect to salute a passion so impeccable and so pure.” Such a tribute from one big man to another is very different from the suggestion in your editorial that Shaw writes and speaks merely to draw attention to himself or to increase the sales of his hooks.

If people adopt tho attitude that everything Shaw says is a joke, and that when ho attacks poverty, wars, complacency, and ignorance, he is merely calculating the number of sales of Ids plays, then nothing will bo able to alter their opinions. Why, then, do f write in protest about your editorial? Because there are some of us who owo a debt to tho inspiration and provocation we have received from Bernard Shaw. His outspoken statements about tho poverty of society in tho days before people adopted their present pose of protending to treat him ns a joke, his long and strenuous activities in creating the Fabian Society, whose influence on social progress cannot bo exaggerated, his friendliness to young authors and encouragement of national drama, professional and amateur, and his insistence that those who have the interests of society at heart most take nothing for granted, but keep on- questioning, enquiring, and searching—these characteristics, no less than the ideas behind Ids plays, have meant that two generations have looked to Shaw as a gnido and teacher. Professor Laski once wrote that he could think of no hotter stimulus to members of the Cabinet than a regular talk with Shaw and Bertrand Russell. I have seen a crowd that could have filled tho Kingsway Hall three times cheer Ids on-’ trance—tho tall, straight, dignified figure walking with tho ease of an athlete. As lie speaks one fools that his passionate zeal for the redress of social wrongs has gripped people so that they return again and again to his plays because of the perfect blending of intensity of mood and penetrating wit. Says Chesterton again: “ There exists by accident an early and beardless portrait of him which really suggests in tho severity and purity of its lines some ol the early ascetic pictures of tho beardless Christ. However ho may shout profanities or seek to shatter tho shrines, there is always something about him which suggests that in a sweeter and more solid civilisation ho would have been a great saint. Ho would have been a saint of a sternly ascetic, perhaps of a sternly negative, type. But he lias this strange note of a saint in him: that he is literally unworldly. . . AH the virtues he has aro heroic virtues. Shaw is like Venus of Milo, all that there is of him is admirable.”

It is not my intention to try to defend ll>o viewpoints and statements of Shaw, but to protest against the false imputation of motives and to insist that throughout his life and in all his writings he has been inspired by n desire to improve the conditions of the people. No one will agree with all that bo has said, hut one of tbo lessons of Shaw’s career is that because one individual does not happen to agree with another the latter is not necessarily a fool or a mountebank. The man who was selected by Mr Garvin to write tlje article on ‘ Socialism ’ for that most respectable English institution the ‘ Encyclopedia Britannica,’ the man who was deemed the most worthy to propose the toast of Professor Einstein’s health during the latter’s London visit, who at tlve age of 72_ wrote ‘ The Intelligent Woman’s Guido to Capitalism and Socialism,’ praised by economists as one of the host accounts of distributive economics, and treated seriously in the journal of the Royal Economic Society, this man who lias been associated throughout his life with the two eminent scholars. Lord Passfiold and Mr Webb, may he conceited, a poseur, or an advertiser, but there are few other men who have had such influence on the political and social thought of this century. The fallacy is to regard him merely as a writer, to attempt the impossible task of separating the thinker and the wit. No one will deny his greatness as p. writer, but he is the outstanding dramatist and wit, only because his thought is far more important than that of other contemporary wits. “ Eor art’s sako alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence,” lie has written, and his social philosophy has given his plays a unity of outlook that is absent from a mere entertainer. However much people may disagree with the ideas expressed they are carried away by the sense of relationship with important things. If they do nob like his ideas they pretend that he is only joking. “I am joking,” ho lias replied. “My way of joking is by telling the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.” Those who have studied his ideas from his writings and not taken the opinions of Arthur Men’s magazine (most famous for his writings for children) have often regretted that Shaw has sometimes let his sense of fun mu away with him, but we remember that when Ibsen portrayed the social problems seriously and tragically on tho stage, he was censored, fiendishly attacked, misrepresented, and hated. Not the least of the debts wo owe to Shaw is his defence of Ibsen, when there was hardly a newspaper in England which understood Ibsen. Compare the theatre before Shaw and tho theatre of to-day, and wo realise tho transformation that Shaw and William Archer have produced. This change is due to the fact that Shaw put back on to the stage ideas and social criticism, hut this was possible only because ho used tho medium of laughter. It is fashionable and proper to praise Ibsen to-day, hut both tho hatred towards Ibsen and the sneers at Shaw arc the reactions of those who arc too willing to take tho easy road of ignoring their ideas.

Shaw donated the Nobel Prize to encourage tlie appreciation in England of Swedish literature. He gave £5,000 for a national theatre. Few other playwrights are so willing to help amateur .societies by releasing them from the payment of royalties. He has taken active slops to establish the British film industry. Ho refused a million dollars from Hollywood for the film rights of his plays. Those, however, are really unimportant matters contrasted with his public zeal. “This is the true joy of life being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as i* mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out, before yon aro thrown on the scrap heap,” We who feel tint Shaw in those words has given ns a worthy line

of conduct, which ho himself has followed, ask that this other interpretation shall ho considered with the one expressed in your editorial. —I am, etc., Lloyd Ross. 1 August 1.