Shawdust

WHAT I REALLY WROTE ABOUT THE WAR--Bernard Shaw--Brentano ($3.75). A wily prima donna among intellectuals, George Bernard Shaw knows that to hold the public eye it is necessary to make frequent appearances on stage. His present occasion, to lay the dust he raised when he wrote about the War, is made happy by many witty words. Having "no ethical respect for modern Capitalist civilization," Socialist Shaw "contemplated the British, German and French sections . . . with impartial disapproval. I felt as if I were witnessing an engagement between two pirate fleets, with however, the very important qualification that as I and my family and friends were on board British ships I did not intend the British section to be defeated if I could help it." Unaided by Socialist and Labor colleagues, who were interested only in pacifism and disarmament, he started his campaign before the War by giving British imperialistic diplomacy a good thwacking. The policy he himself proposed, says Shaw, was adopted at Locarno, twelve years later "when it was unanimously applauded as a triumph of British statesmanship." When the War broke, Shaw saw in its confusion a good opportunity for Socialists to snatch a political victory, told them "there are only two real flags in the world henceforth: the red flag of Democratic Socialism and the black flag of Capitalism." Patriotic indignation overflowed. By open letter Shaw tried to persuade Wilson to request that Great Britain, France and Germany should withdraw from Belgium and fight in their own territories. He re-reminded the President of "the quaint absurdity of a war waged formally between the German Kaiser, the German Tsar, the German King of the Belgians, the German King of England, the German Emperor of Austria." Shaw could see the absurdity of the War, could not see the absurdity of fighting witless circumstance with wit. For all his labors nothing but scandal ensued. Right down to the Treaty of Versailles, when Shaw pleaded for clemency towards Germany his utterances "had about as much effect on the proceedings ... as the buzzing of a London fly has on the meditations of a whale in Baffin's Bay."

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