"I AM NOT TURNING TO RUSSIA." RUSSIA IS TURNING TO ME"

Wanganui Chronicle, 5 February 1949, Page 5

"I AM NOT TURNING TO RUSSIA." RUSSIA IS TURNING TO ME"

Bernard Shaw's Reply To Soviet Comment On His "Isolation"

LONDON, Feb. 4 (Ree. 6 pm).—When a. member of the Soviet Polit-Bureau, Mr. Manuilsky, speaking in the Ukrainian Communist Party Congress, drew a, harrowing picture of Mr. George Bernard Shaw living in lonely isolation in Britain, and claimed that Shaw, “like many of the best people among the capitalist intelligentsia,” was turning more and mare towards the Soviet Union, Shaw made this rejoinder:

“This tissue of mistakes shows that in Russia politicians know even less than ours about the history of their own movement.

“I am not turning more to Russia. On the contrary, Russia has been turning more and more to Fabian policy, of which I was one of the founders 60 years ago.

*1 backed Lenin long before Churchill, to his eternal credit, recognised and proclaimed him a great Statesman.

“I am now trying to wake up our diplomatic duffers to the patent fact that Stalin is even greater. He is head and shoulders above the ablest of them.

“As to my. being neglected and forgotten, I am only beginning to be discovered, and would be only too glad to be allowed by postmen and pressmen to die in peace.

“Heaven keep me more out of the headlines.”—Special N.Z.P.A. Correspondent).