A WITTY CRITICISM

Patea Mail, Volume LIII, 7 March 1932, Page 2

A WITTY CRITICISM

AN AMERICAN ON G. B. SHAW

The editor of the ‘Chicago Tribune’ has the following witty criticism of G. B. Shaw in connection with his recent visit to Eussia.

“Mr. Shaw, G. 8., the eminent amateur collectivist and absentee Eed who lives his dream life in Eussia and gets his cereals, asparagus, and boiled potatoes in London, where he may have a fire in the grate when he wants one and take a private profit off anything he can. sell, was on the air the other day for America, selling the .Soviets to the down-trodden Yankees. At the time of his speech the subjects of his praise were either in the food ticket line to get the evening carrot or onion or were spreading the straw tick in the corner of a cold room and loosening the clothes line belt preparatory to curling up in their whiskers for a night’s sleep. His auditors were seated by their radios. “The contrast in physical conditions between the world of which and the world to which he spoke would be Shavian justification for addressing the people with homes, heat, and radios for the reception of a London talk as boobs and describing the Stabilised helots of State as free intellectuals. Mr. Shaw, with real admiration for what he described, explained to his American listeners that if one of them in Eussia, believing that he was entitled to the profit of his own work, should undertake to get it, he would be sequestrated and questioned and later bis friends would be told not to concern themselves further about him. He would not be returning home. He would be testing the realities, if any, of eternity and immortality. Thus under the new order of intellectual freedom. Applied in London, this doctrine would have interrupted Mr. Shaw in the broadcasting studio in the first five minutes of his speech. He would have been led to the Tower or the nearest police station and shot in the head for the encouragement of intellectual freedom and the betterment of life. His friends would have been told not to worry about him. He was not coming homo. Mr. Shaw’s objection to private profit in his own ease is notorious.”