ELECTION BY BLOOD-TEST

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11423, 20 January 1923, Page 13

ELECTION BY BLOOD-TEST

MR G. B. SHAW’S LATEST FANTASY. A new method of electing our statesmen by blood and secretion test and general capacity instead of popular vote was recently advocated—not too solemnly—by Mr G. B. Shaw to a crowded audience at King’s Hall, Oovent Garden. We wanted to govern us, said Mr Shaw, not men who were experts themselves, but who understood what the experts were doing. Practitioners were distinguished from theorists in law and medicine. Why not in government? An Astronomer Royal (he said) might not be an expert mathematician himself, but he understood what the men who made the extraordinary calculations were doing. THE SCIENTIFIC TEST. “The test 1 should like would he a scientific test,” he said 1 ; and proceeded to quote a famous American doctor who told yon all about yourself on receipt of two drops of your blood on a piece of white blotting-paper. “If yon’ could test and' analyse his hlood and secretions,” he continued, in outlining his ideal ruler, “you would get a test of capacity that would be ideal, because you could eliminate the personal factor.' 1 “You would be able to say of a certain man: “This ie No. 1 Man, who is capable of finance and foreign policy but knows nothing whatever of history or geography, or even the difference between a penny and a sixpence. But he has the capacity to understand these things.’ PANELS OF CANDIDATES. “There would he a Municipal, Parliamentary, and Cabinet panel of. such men, from which our rulers would be selected I “That is what is going to make my lecture entirely futile,” (Mr Shaw had mourned apologetically before proceeding to outline his startling remedy. Oh the way out a member of the audience was Heard to remark: “Well, after hearing G.B.S.’s alternative I find myself with a belief in the present methods which positively astonishes me!” So perhaps Mr Shaw was right. . . .