Mr. Shaw"s position is not admirable when he chooses their days of tribulation for sticking pins into his own people, even though some of the things he says may be unpleasantly true. But it cannot be denied that he has some sane views on the situation. The pity is that he must always impair the force of the useful things he has to say by flippancies, impertinences, and out-of-place girdings at those whose courage he should help to maintain. He reminds one of a man who insists on wrangling over the mistaken construction of a chimney while the house is burning down.
*Bernard Shaw as a Patriot.*
_From The New York World, Nov. 17, 1914._
Bernard Shaw has written for our neighbor THE TIMES an elaborate three-page thesis to maintain:
1. That Great Britain was abundantly justified in making war with Germany.
2. That the explanation given by the British Government for making war against Germany was stupid, hypocritical, mendacious, and disgraceful.
3. That he alone is capable of interpreting the moral purpose of the British people in undertaking this necessary work of civilization.
4. That the reason the British Government"s justification of the war is so inadequate is because no British Government is ever so clever as Bernard Shaw.
5. That even in the midst of the most horrible calamity known to human history it pays to advertise.
Various patriots have various ways of serving their country. Some go to the firing line to be shot and others stay at home to be a source of innocent merriment to the survivors.
*"Shaw Empty of Good Sense"*
By Christabel Pankhurst.
Written for THE NEW YORK TIMES.
His reputation for perversity and contrariety is fully maintained by George Bernard Shaw in the ineptly-named article, "Common Sense About the War." At home in Britain we all know that it is Mr. Shaw"s habit to oppose where he might be expected to support, and vice versa. For example, should he speak at a prohibition meeting he would most likely extol strong drink, or if asked to defend the sale of liquor declare dramatically for prohibition.
He sees himself as the critic of everything and everybody--the one and only man who knows what to do and how to do it.
Mr. Shaw charges his compatriots with intellectual laziness, but they are not so lazy as to leave him to do their thinking for them. That he sometimes--and oftener in the past than now--says illuminating things is true, but firm reliance cannot be placed upon his freakish mental processes, exemplified in his writings about the war. He has played with effect the part of jester to the British public, but when, as now, his jests are empty of the kernel of good sense, the matter gets beyond a joke.
The truth is that in face of this great and tragic reality of war the men of mere words, the literary theorists, are in danger of missing their way. Certainly women of deeds are more likely to see things aright than are men of words, and it is as a woman of deeds that I, a suffragette, make answer to my irresponsible compatriot, Mr. Bernard Shaw. And yet not a compatriot, for Mr. Shaw disclaims those feelings of loyalty and enthusiasm for the national cause that fill the ma.s.s of us who live under the British flag!
"Until Home Rule emerges from its present suspended animation," says Mr.
Shaw, "I shall retain my Irish capacity for criticising England with something of the detachment of a foreigner." Now, these words are not a little surprising, because Mr. Shaw"s interest in the Home Rule cause has. .h.i.therto been of a most restrained and well-nigh secret character, and any one who imagines that Mr. Shaw is a strenuous campaigner for Home Rule is greatly mistaken. If in the years preceding the war the Horne Rule cause had depended upon Mr. Shaw"s activities, it would have been in a bad way. It is now, when a foreign enemy menaces our nation as a whole, that Mr. Shaw manifests this enhanced interest in Home Rule.
The suffragettes, who have fought and suffered for their cause as no living man reformer in the British Isles has fought and suffered for his, have during the present crisis subordinated their claim to the urgent claims of national honor and safety. So Mr. Shaw, whose campaigning is done generally in the armchair, and never in any place more dangerous than the rostrum, ought surely to refrain from his frivolous, inconsistent, destructive, and unprofitable criticism of our country.
As for the question of lynching, Mr. Shaw is, the American public may be a.s.sured, in no danger whatever of being lynched. He is in far more danger of having the Iron Cross conferred upon him by the Kaiser in recognition of his attempt to supplement the activities of the official German Press Bureau. But if he were a German subject, writing on certain points of German policy as he does upon certain points of British policy, his fate can well be imagined. The only retribution that will come upon this man, who exploits the freedom of speech and pen that England gives him, is that his words lose now and henceforth the weight they used to have. Oh, the conceit of the man, who in this dark hour, when the English are dying on the battlefield, writes of "taking the conceit out of England" by a stroke of his inconsequent pen!
*Admits England"s Cause Is Just.*
But with all his will to "take the conceit" out of this England, so fiercely menaced, her sons killed, her daughters widowed--yet needing, so he thinks, his castigation into the bargain--the critic is constrained to admit that our country is playing the part of "the responsible policeman of the West" and that "for England to have refrained from hurling herself into the fray, horse, foot, and artillery, was impossible from every point of view." Then why preface these statements by a series of attacks upon the country which is admitted to be justly fighting in a just cause?
The sole importance of Mr. Shaw"s criticism comes from this. He unwarrantably indorses statements made by Germany in her attempt to put the Allies in the wrong. Because he is known to the German people by his dramatic work, extracts from his article will be circulated among them as an expression of the views of a representative British citizen. And how are the Germans to know that this is false, deprived as they are of news of what is happening in the outside world and ignorant as they must be of Mr. Shaw"s real lack of influence at this serious time?
That their traffic in mere words disables some literary men from comprehending facts is shown by Mr. Shaw"s play upon the word "Junkerism." He points to the dictionary definition of the word instead of to the fact it represents, and by this verbal juggling tries to convince his readers that the military autocracy that dominates and misdirects Germany has its counterpart and equal in Great Britain.
Whereas, the conditions in the two countries are wholly different, and it is this very difference that Germany has regarded as one of the signs of British inferiority.
Mr. Shaw"s suggestion that the British are posing as "Injured Innocence"
and as "Mild Gazelles" is neither funny nor true. We are simply a people defending ourselves, resisting conquest and military despotism, and fighting for the ideal of freedom and self-government. When our country is no longer in danger we suffragettes, if it be still necessary, are prepared to fight on and wage our civil war that we may win freedom and self-government for women as well as men. But, in the meantime, we support the men--yes, and even the Government do we in a sense support--in fighting the common enemy who menaces the freedom of men and women alike. Although the Government in the past have erred gravely in their dealing with the woman question, they are for the purpose of this war the instrument of the nation.
*Facts Belie Him.*
Mr. Shaw would seem to hold Britain responsible for German militarism, but the facts he cites are against him there. "I am old enough," says he, "to remember the beginnings of the anti-German phase of military propaganda in England. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 left England very much taken aback. Up to that date n.o.body was much afraid that Prussia--suddenly Prussia beat France right down in the dust."
Precisely! It was this war on France, deliberately engineered by Bismarck, and it was the defeat and despoilment of France that fed Germany"s militarism and encouraged Germany to make those plans of military aggression which, after long and deliberate preparation, are being carried into effect in the present war. Germany"s plans of military aggression have compelled other countries to prepare, however inadequately, to defend themselves.
Mr. Shaw gives support to the Germans" contention that they are not the aggressors but are menaced by Russia. Yet he does not explain why, if that is so, Germany took French gold and territory in 1870 and has since continued to alienate France; nor why Germany has chosen Britain as her enemy of enemies to be supplanted and surpa.s.sed in power.
If Germany is simply on the defensive against Russia and has no desire to attack and cripple France and Britain, then why has she antagonized these countries and driven one after the other into a Russian alliance?
When he affects to criticise Germany for not having "entrusted the security of her western frontier to the public opinion of Western Europe and to America and fought Russia, if attacked, with her rear not otherwise defended," Mr. Shaw burkes the fact that Germany"s object is to seize Belgium and to make it part of the German Empire, also to seize at least the northern coast of France and to make this seizure the means of dominating Britain.
Indeed, the point at which German ambition for conquest ceases would be hard to fix. And yet Mr. Shaw pictures for us an injured-innocent, mild-gazelle Germany on the defensive! Quite in this picture is his a.s.sertion that "the ultimatum to Servia was the escapade of a dotard,"
whereas, everybody knows that the ultimatum was dictated at Berlin. It is plain as a pikestaff that in order to bring on the Great War of conquest for which her rulers thought The Day had arrived. Germany dictated the issue and terms of the ultimatum to Servia and then urged Austria to refuse any compromise and arbitration which might have averted war.
Mr. Shaw has a.s.sumed the impossible task of trying to blind the American public to these and other facts that prove Germany to be the aggressor in this war, but he will fail in his attempt at white-washing German policy because it is one of the characteristics of the American people that they have a strong feeling for reality and that no twisting and combining of words can prevent them from getting at the facts beneath.
Bernhardi"s writings are generally believed to be an inspiration, and in part a statement of German policy. But Mr. Shaw differs. In trying to prove that Bernhardism has nothing to do with the case, he maintains that Germany has neglected the Bernhardi programme, and says:
"He warned Germany to make an alliance with Italy, Austria, Turkey, and America before undertaking the subjugation of France, then of England."
Mr. Shaw then a.s.serts that Germany disregarded this advice and allowed herself to be caught between Russia and a Franco-British combination with no ally save Austria. But here again facts are against him. For Germany has followed with marvelous precision the line drawn by Bernhardi.
She is actually fighting in partnership with Austria. She allied herself with Italy--though Italy has refused to fight with her in this present war of aggression. Germany has also bent Turkey to her purpose, and has dragged the Turks into the war. An alliance with America! Well, to have gained the help of America in crushing France and crippling England, and ravaging and conquering Belgium was quite beyond the power of German diplomacy and intrigue! Still Germany"s attempts to win at least America"s moral support in this war are vigorous, if unsuccessful.
And with what quotable matter Mr. Shaw provides the German rulers for the further deluding of their subjects when he writes of the German people being "stirred to their depths by the apparent treachery and duplicity of the attack made upon them in their extrernest peril from France and Russia," when he writes of the Kaiser doing "all a Kaiser could do without unbearable ignominy to induce the British not to fight him and give him fair play with Russia," and when he writes of "taking the Kaiser at a disadvantage." As though we ought meekly to have agreed to the Kaiser"s plan of defeating France and using her defeat as a bridge to England and a means of conquering England! Uncommon nonsense about the war--so we must rename Mr. Shaw"s production!
And what is all this that flows from the pen of Mr. Shaw about Belgium and "obsolete treaties," "rights of way," "necessities that know no international law," "circ.u.mstances that alter treaties"? Made in Germany such statements are, and yet even the Imperial German Chancellor is not so contemptuous as Bernard Shaw is of Belgium"s charter of existence, the treaty now violated by Germany.
That is a treaty that cannot become obsolete until the powers who made it release Belgium from the restrictions and obligations which the treaty imposes. Germany pleads guilty in this matter of the violation of Belgian neutrality, though Mr. Shaw attempts to show her innocent, for the German Chancellor has said: "This is an infraction of international law--we are compelled to overrule the legitimate protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. We shall repair the wrong we are doing as soon as our military aims have been achieved." And again the Chancellor said the invasion of Belgium "is contrary to the law of nature." To Mr. Bernard Shaw"s peculiar sense of international morality such dealing is not, however, repugnant.
*No "Right of Way" in Belgium.*
In his letter to President Wilson Mr. Shaw, either willfully or ignorantly, seeks to confuse the neutrality of a neutralized State such as Belgium and the neutrality of an ordinary State such as Italy, and he pretends that violation of the first sort of neutrality creates a situation in no way different from that created by the violation of the second and normal sort of neutrality. I would refer Mr. Shaw to "The Case for Belgium" issued by the Belgian delegates to the United States wherein they point out that "the peculiarity about Belgian neutrality is that it has been imposed upon her by the powers as the one condition upon which they recognized her national existence."