MORRIS AS A SOCIALIST.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5739, 5 December 1896, Page 7

MORRIS AS A SOCIALIST.

William Morris's position as a Socialist, aud his services to the cause of Socialism, have attracted a good deal of attention from those who have contributed notices of his death to the English papers. As more than one reviewer has pointed out, the authorship of such a poem as " The Earthly Paradise," with its expressions of sympathy for a bygone era and its old world and reactionary tendencies, appears quite inconsistent with any fondness for a modern socialistic regime. That Morris wrote and spoke much in favour of Socialism is obvious. The only question is how far he was ready to go in bringing the England that he knew and loved into line with the ideas of sncli men as Karl Marx, or even Robert Blatchford ; how far he differed from that "Dreamer of dreams borne out of 'my due time," which he declared himself to be. Bernard Shaw, in the Saturday Review, claims Morris as the heartiest of co-workers. He relates how the Socialistic League was once benefited by the poet in the most signal manner. The League was in desperate straits for funds, and the most obvious way of procuring- them seemed to be to organise a dramatic entertainment. Morris set himself to work for this purpose and produced the topical extravaganza, Nupkins Awakened, almost the only piece of 'dramatic literature that he ever wrote. Its chief character parts were Sir Peter Edlin, Tennyson and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and its purpose, in as far as it had any purpose outside the immediate one of " raising the wind," was to bring down to a very intelligible level the position of dignitaries which had come to be looked ixpon with traditional awe. The success of the play was undoubted. " There has," says Mr Shaw, " been no more successful first night within my memory." It was Morris, again, who was the mainstay of The Commonweal, a socialistic journal. Even more conclusive evidence of his devotion to the cause of the workers was his action in "processing" through Trafalgar Square, at the imminent risk of being arrested by the police. He was heard to declare that the curse of mankind was civilisation, that Australia ought to have been left to the blacks, New Zealand to the Maoris, and South Africa to the Kaffirs. Altogether, Morris's Socialism was absolutely genuine in as far as it aimed at getting something like equality between employer and employed. But it was a socialism of the picturesque and idealistic order ; it never went the length of attempting the prosaic details which are inseparable from any practical plan.