COMMON SENSE ABOUT

THE SHAW

I

IF anybody says that I ought to apologize for writing this little book, seeing that it is nearly all about Mr. Shaw, I can only say what Mr. Shaw himself said when some one in the gallery hissed one of Fanny's first plays: "I quite agree with you." But there is this difference: he didn't mean it, and I do. That was merely an early manifestation by him of that pose which is now comprehensively named Shavianism. In a 99 common sense world, brilliant dramatists do not write plays which they honestly believe deserve what, in the slang of the craft, is known as "the bird"; and when Mr. Shaw told the man in the gallery he quite agreed with him he was merely trying to discon9

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cert a hostile critic, for whom the Shavian inspiration of the moment was not equal to providing a more adequate reply, by taking him unexpectedly at his word, and he was keeping his private opinion of the criticism to himself.

What that opinion was may be sufficiently deduced from the opinion that the Shaw has of G.B.S. "One of the literary glories of his reign" is the modest label which he attached to himself in an elegant article upon the late King Edward, which suggested, if I remember rightly, that the deceased monarch, if he had not been a King, would have made an excellent publican or bookmaker-a merry and tasteful joke perpetrated by the Shaw in order, no doubt, to show that even in writing the obituary notice of a King he could be trusted not to condescend to the base convention of posthumous eulogy. For the Shaw is no courtier, and he certainly went to the limit of consideration for a Court in mourning by refraining from describing King Edward as 66 one of the monarchical glories of my

epoch." But, of course, his "I quite agree with you" was merely Shavianism—and I can't put it lower than that. It was, that is to say (to use favourite terms of his own in application to the conduct of other people), so much cant, humbug, and hypocrisy-a pose of insincerity, in short. That is my belief, but I will gladly modify it if, when I have done expressing my opinion of him in this matter, he is still able to say, not blithely and jauntily (which wouldn't "take me in "), but humbly and sadly, "I quite agree with you."

I, at any rate, quite sincerely agree with those who may say that any book devoted to Mr. Shaw just now (even though it come not to praise but to help to bury him) needs some sort of apology by way of placating a public sated ad nauseam with Shavianism. But the extenuation is simply this: in the universal disgust which his attitude upon the war has aroused, he is escaping an adequate exposure; and those who have not had the patience to read his notorious pamphlet "Common Sense about the War" do not know

the strength of the case for their abstention. He had a pretty good innings with the pamphlet ; but, unfortunately, the quiet disdain with which some forty odd millions received it did not silence him, whilst the active resentment of the few who have had something to say upon the matter has only evoked fresh eruptions in the "crater "-for the Shaw is, if anything, an Irishman. His pamphlet came as a blast which blew out the candles placed by the faithful at his shrine, and few will ever be re-lit-indeed, he blew his own light out. And since then he has, by much vigorous puffing and blowing, endeavoured to fan the flame of a controversy which threatened to die down because there was simply nothing polite left to be said. Which is, however, the very point at which you ought to begin in dealing with him.

So, in the breathless space left by the pamphlet in which Mr. Shaw has written his own epitaph (a scurrilous scribble upon the edifice of the greatest and most righteous effort of our country), Mr. Shaw rushed in to supplement what he had already said

when he had already said too much. Eagerly has he fastened upon the opportunity given by the few who have come forward to "have it out" with him, and who yet probably felt that in saying anything at all about him they almost profaned the holy hush; and during the last few months "Mr. Shaw on the War" has become a standing heading in the weekly reviews, mainly owing to the indefatigable communications of the Shaw himself, who does not know even when to let ill alone. Like "a French falconer, he flies at anything," and has even "taken on" a schoolboy, who caught him out in a very bad mistake on a matter of recent history. For the Shaw had written in The Nation (in a remote and irrelevant extension of the subject of the war to the subject of the Monroe Doctrine) speculating on what would happen "if the United States should ever decide to annex Alaska," and he then proceeded to show that such a speculation proved the Monroe Doctrine to be "tosh." Thereupon "A Schoolboy" wrote to The Nation simply and respect