TWO IN ONE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1197, 20 December 1924, Page 13

TWO IN ONE

THE SOVIET AND THE INTERNATIONAL. (Contributed by N.Z. Welfare League). We learn, from the daily press that Mr Bernard Shaw, who was present recently as a guest at the Communist Red Levee which was held in -London, has tendered some very plain even caustic advice to the Soviet Power in Russia. The Daily Herald nae been granted exclusive privileges in publishing Mr Shaw 3 letter which he sent by request to the Moscow Izvestia. [hie is but right, as tho Daily Herald was at one time assisted with finance by the Moscow Boisheviki, and a literary humourist was entitled to give it the first chance in exposing the sad failings of its Red friends abroad. The admission by Air Shaw that the Third International, and that, all-fired fulminator Zinovieff wrecked the English elections for the Socialist Labour Party is at the same time an assumption that the pink Socialists of Britain wore free from blame in tho tactics of “for and against the nation” which they pursued. Such assumption, however, the great majority of British electors declined to recognise as valid. Of course a literary genius with capacity for making the moot stupid paradox appear as if it were a logically reasoned conclusion has an advantage over ordinary persons, the correctness of whose phrases are judged on the simple basis of bow they square with known facts or the current methods of reasoning. Again, intellect of the school to which Sir Shaw belongs need not trouble very much as to the accuracy of his assumptions, but can give free play to the faculty of imagination as a means of instructing. humanity. We are told in this letter that “from the view point of English Socialists the Third International do not know the beginning of their business.” This is interesting to tho non-Socialists. The question arises—what is their business? It- appears 'to be the overturning of society and the creation of mischief all round. They evidently do know the beginning of such destructive business from the widespread unrest they have been creating even in Mr Shaw’s highly respectable Socialiscio party. Of tte end of the business who knows? THE VAST ASSUMPTION. This letter of Mr Shaw bears the mark of a vast assumption which is most humorous from, the standpoint if its unconscious simplicity. The Soviet is advised in solemn terms to dissociate itself from the foolish and wicked International. It is remindful of advice given by Sydney Smith to a friend who was complaining of the heat in the “dog .lays” to strip off his flesh and sit in his baro bones. Is it realised that what is here requested of the Reds in Moscow is that the Soviet leaders, who are also the leaders of the Third International, are to laugh at themselves, hold their “Bourgois idealism” and childish inexperience in scorn, and finally, we suppose, dissociate themselves from themselves. This is the kind of nonsense we get from the Solialist literary genius who takes the role of “all knowing”—at once writer, dramatist, philosopher, economist, statesman, educationist and beyond all “humourist”—if at times unconscious. Tho Soviet and tho International are distinct and separate only in the same respect as the two laces of a bad pi nny are. Tou may call them the head and tail of Bolshevism as we speak of the head and tail of a coin of the realm. The two are in actuality one. To use separate names makes no distinction in the thing named when it is in prnciple and identity like a single person who bears a name and an alias, generally for purposes of deception. For all practical objects the Soviet is the alias of the International and vice, versa. We have the same trick of names from the Reds in New'Zealand where the same persons and principles masquerade as “The Alliance of Labour” and “The New Zealand Labour Party.” To the leader of tho “New Zealand Labour Party,” who declares himself a Marxian Socialist, and contends that Mavxianism is scientific, we commend the statement of Air Shaw that “wherever Socialism is a living force it has left Marx as far behind as modern science has left Aloses.” Truly for a school of nil wise thinkers the Socialists and Communists, Alarxiane and Fabians show remarkable divergence on all points where they are supposed to agree. They aro all ready to recreate the Universe on better lines than deity even has laid down. It is only when they get to work that mankind discovers what babbling children they are after all.