Bernard Shaw and the Empire

MR. C. P. TISDALL introduced the speaker.

MR. COLBOURNE then began: I am going to reverse the usual order about the best wine coming last, and put my best wine first; that is, my own personal thanks for your hospitality and for the honour you have done me in asking me to speak to you, and the honour done myself and my esteemed colleague and partner, Mr. Barry Jones, in asking both of us to be your guests today. We take it as an honour, and it goes without saying that it is also a pleasure, because by a law passed in the British Parliament in the reign of Queen Elizabeth we are still, civically, rogues and vagabonds. (Laughter.) Nonetheless Mr. Jones and I are among friends, and there is only one person here with whom I am not on good terms. I suppose I am very ungrateful, because this person has done us a great deal of good and helped us in many ways, yet I not only owe him a grudge but I am in mortal terror of him--I refer to our important friend, Mr. Microphone. (Laughter.)

Last year in Toronto Mr. Microphone let me down badly. I did not know the gentleman very well then, and he took advantage of my ignorance as though he had been the husband of Dame Rumour, and passed along something that I said to Glasgow; Glasgow passed it on to a London correspondent, who rushed up to Whitehall Court, knocked on Bernard Shaw's door and said, "Hey! Hey! What's all this about?" And Bernard Shaw had to get out of it as best he could. I had said-quite truthfully, of coursethat Bernard Shaw was not as black as he had been painted by the popular press (and therefore by the popular imagination) during the Great War; and I now feel it only just, from Bernard Shaw's point of view, to read part of a postcard which I received shortly after what he calls the heath fire which I had started. He said, "The tour has been very satisfactory to me"-I suppose he was referring to the vast weekly cheques which we used to send him-"and I have no mortal objection to you repeating it if you have not got cold feet; but don't tell Canadians that I was a British spy masquerading as a Pro-German during the War. (Laughter.) You started a serious heath fire with that."

Well, because I have to be so careful, and because I thought you would like to get certain statements and even 'anecdotes right from the horse's mouth--if I may compare Bernard Shaw to so noble an animal-I will take the liberty of reading a passage or two from this little book of mine which is just out. I do it because Bernard Shaw very kindly and nicely has actually written the book himself, for I am very happy to say that he scratched out practically everything I had written, and wrote in the margin, in his own spidery neat handwriting, the truth. (Laughter.) It 'is a terrible reflection that when we crossed the continent last year and, owing t0 the kindness and hospitality of the whole Dominion, I found myself standing on very numerous occasions before all sorts of assemblies, I filled them with what apparently--owing to Bernard Shaw's corrections in the MS. of this little book--was a pack of lies. (Laughter.)

I was really on a holiday when your secretary asked me to choose a subject for this little talk, and I replied, "Bernard Shaw and the Empire". I had just got on the train at Vancouver, and had four days of train-holiday before me, and I suppose I was in a gay and comparatively daring mood; and I think I can, in a way, sense what is passing through the minds of this distinguished company at this moment--a sort of mental murmur of "Bernard Shaw and the Empire! Oil and Vinegar! Oil and Vinegar!" (Laughter.) Yet those of us who are even amateur cooks know that oil and vinegar, given a little patience, will eventually mix and form quite a tolerable kind of salad-dressing. So we will try to mix these two seemingly incongruous ingredients and see if we can find some points of contact between Bernard Shaw and the Empire.

I suppose the first thing to think of is that the British Empire must be a very poor empire if it cannot survive the criticism of a man like Bernard Shaw. I remember that Hilaire Belloc, an ardent Roman Catholic, made an analogous remark once in private conversation apropos of his beloved Church of Rome, saying that the Church of Rome must be the most wonderful institution in the world, because in the course of its history it had managed to survive so many centuries of mismanagement and corruption. (Laughter.) Well, I think that to the British Empire Bernard Shaw's caustic darts and criticisms are just like so many drops of water on a very large rock; and that is why I think that we allow him to settle down in the very heart of the Empire and do his worst--because we know that he can do no harm. (Laughter.)

Yes, he has had the effrontery to settle down in the very heart of the British Empire, and to call himself our Public Thinker. (Laughter.) And we let him alone, and do nothing about it. Now, because of his critical attitude toward Britishers, let us call Bernard Shaw a foreigner; in fact, for the sake of this by-the-way argument, we must call anybody who is not an actual Englishman a foreigner. Well, in looking back half a century or so, I found that the English were a very remarkable race, because they knew when not to do things themselves, and knew when to invite in somebody who could do them better. For instance, the English are supposed to be a warlike race; yet we find it was an Irishman who led the troops to victory in the Napoleonic wars; an Irishman who led the troops at the beginning of the Great War, and a Scotsman who led the troops of Empire to victory at the end of the Great War. Turning to politics, and not going back very far, we find that it was a professing Jew who won the heart of the great Queen, and not her foursquare English Gladstone; and it was Disraeli, I suppose, who first envisaged the British Empire as we know it today. Again, I suppose it was the German Prince Consort who set England in train for her great industrial development, through the great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Coming nearer to our own day, we find the late Lord Asquith, an Englishman, in the seat of power at the beginning of the Great War, but soon enough he is displaced by a Welshman, and finally, when the English Mr. Baldwin after the War displaces Mr. Lloyd George, he soon enough is displaced by a Scotsman.* And so we feel--I certainly feel myself--that it is just part of the general national anomaly that we allow these excellent people to come and do things which we know they may very likely do better than ourselves. And that, I think, is itself a sign of greatness--to know when you can't do a thing. (Laughter.) I think we know subconsciously that we are such fine seamen that we will allow anybody who cares to try to stand to the wheel of the Ship of State, knowing that we ourselves are also on board, and that if anything happens we shall be able to guide the ship into safe haven at last. (Laughter.)

I just mentioned that Bernard Shaw lives in London; he cannot live there voluntarily if he really loathes not only it, but the English and the British Empire as well. Moreover, he has the effrontery to live not only in London, but within sprinting distance of Buckingham Palace and a revolver's shot of Whitehall Palace, where King James I used to watch Will Shakespeare act in his own plays; while immediately across the river from Whitehall Court, Shaw's London house, is the site of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Again, we find Bernard Shaw spending week-ends with the plutocratic Astors, one of whom, I believe,

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* Note--Actually the late Mr. Bonar Law, a Canadian, succeeded Lloyd George, and Lord Asquith was pushed from power largely by the activities of a Canadian London newspaper king. At the beginning of the century Scotsmen led both parties: Balfour the Conservative, and Campbell-Bansorman the Liberals. Finally, see The Apple Cart where Shaw writes: "God help England if she had no Scotsmen to think for her."-M.C.

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is the proprietor of the great Conservative organ, The Tunes. Yet all of these, King and commoner, gladly suffer the proximity and even the society of this intolerable man.

Talking of Shakespeare, you get the same line of criticism from Bernard Shaw about Shakespeare as that which he levels at all other sane and sober institutions. He says that he is better than Shakespeare, and yet you will find that he is a regular visitor every Birthday Festival at Stratford-Upon-Avon, and is the man who is the most fruitful of suggestion in connection with the new Memorial Theatre there; and I do not doubt that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald consulted Bernard Shaw as to whether he should advise the King that Mr. Archibald Flower was fit to become Sir Archibald Flower-for, as you know, the Chairman of the Governors of the Memorial Theatre has just been knighted, and I mention this because I believe Sir Archie had the pleasure of being in Toronto just about a year ago. (Applause.)

Well, Bernard Shaw is a very clever man! He has a curious way of being able to mix with the highbrows. (Laughter.) One is Lady Astor. Well, he can also mix with a highbrow like Gene Tunney. (Laughter.) I do not wish to draw any comparisons, but I think the only other man in the British Empire who could mix and be equally at home with Lady Astor on the one hand and Gene Tunney on the other is our beloved Prince of Wales. (Applause.)

Having mentioned the Prince of Wales, let us see what happens when he and Bernard Shaw come together. The most amazing thing happens; Bernard Shaw becomes modest. (Laughter.) And yet the mob, as usual, misunderstood him, and began to hiss. I suppose they hissed because Bernard Shaw was being modest; they were not used to that sort of thing. It was at a boxing contest a month or so ago. The Prince was sitting on one side of the ring and Bernard Shaw on the other, and the Prince sent a message--three times I think--to Bernard Shaw, who, having had the message whispered into his ear, vigorously shook his head in a determined negative. At the third time the crowd began to hiss Bernard Shaw, because they thought that he was refusing a request from the Prince of Wales to go over and say "How do you do?" But all that had happened was that the Prince of Wales, with his native courtesy and spirit of doing the right thing in the right way at the right moment, had done a gracious thing to an old gentleman in his 74th year, and had asked Bernard Shaw to give away the prizes. Bernard Shaw, in the presence of his Prince, had very modestly and, wisely refused to do so.

We may go even further than that. We may say that Bernard Shaw is a man who is most conscious of the niceties of high treason and lese majeste. At just such a table as this--I saw a picture of it--Bernard Shaw was being honoured by the Critics' Circle a short while ago, and at the end of the banquet he stood up and began his speech in the presence of Mr. Microphone. The opening sentence was typically Shavian; that is to say, he shocked everybody, and then, just as they were wondering how to take it, he made them smile and acknowledge that he was, with his awful, devastating reason and logic, perfectly right. (Laughter.) This was the way he started: "Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, and FellowCitizens." (Laughter.) I do not believe the company were as kind to him as you have just been to me; I don't believe there was any laughter; but at the end of the obvious awkward pause Bernard Shaw said that he felt bound to begin in that way so that he should be guilty of no disrespect, because (and here would f' dome the Shavian smile) he naturally assumed that everybody in the land was listening to him. (Laughter.)

Well, this careful, loyal man, who spends his week-ends with the Astors, and swims regularly in the pool of the R.A.C. and is therefore presumably a member of the Royal Automobile Club; this is the man who at a political meeting not long ago infuriated his audience even beyond the usual pitch of fury, which is considerable. One man, unable to restrain himself any longer, got up and, shaking a finger at the white-bearded figure on the platform, said, "Mr. Shaw, are you or are you not a Bolshevik?" And Bernard Shaw smiled and said, "I am a Bolshevik." (Laughter.)

Well, that word brings us into politics, and I suppose the most Shavian thing in politics, and the most political thing in Shaviana, at the present moment is "The Apple Cart". As Sir Barry Jackson said to me when I saw him in Canada last autumn: "How like Bernard Shaw it is that, the moment his socialist friends get into political power, he himself should turn into a rabid Conservative!" Because his latest play, "The Apple Cart", is a magnificent diatribe on the virtues, and a prophecy for the final success of a monarchy. He predicts that even if a modern monarchy were overthrown it would come back trailing clouds, if not of. glory, yet of popular votes, and entrench itself even more fully in the popular favour as a monarchical and absolute dictatorship; from which we can argue, if we want to, that Bernard Shaw is a super-Conservative. (Laughter.)

Looking at the past, however, I think a word is due on the fact that it was Bernard Shaw who was chiefly instrumental with Sidney Webb in founding the Fabian Society, which I suppose is more responsible than anything else m British politics for having made socialism, if not popular, at least fairly respectable. (Laughter.) Bernard Shaw the brilliant pamphleteer, and Sidney Webb the assiduous statistician, between them pushed and pulled until the Fabian Society became a live thing, and I think it is a fair guess to say that, had it not been for the Fabian Society and its conversion of bloodthirsty slogans into intelligent political tenets, the Labour Party would not have achieved the seat of power so soon. So one might say that it is chiefly due to Bernard Shaw and his political work in the past that the present British Government is in power. *

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Note.--Shaw would of course deny that the Labour Government represents the faintest inkling of his views. He has said that you could no more expect true socialism from the present Labour Party than scrambled eggs from a sewingmachine. For Shaw's political views see his "Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism." M.C.

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I do not know whether Mr. Thomas, when he was over here, told you a little story of Sidney Webb, who is now Lord Passfield. They were both at a dinner one night, and Mr. Thomas, who apparently is given to pulling the legs of his colleagues, looked at Lord Passfield and said, "I understand that my noble Lord and friend started his life as a Colonial Office clerk, but spent most of his time in writing a book entitled, 'The Danger to the British Constitution of the Second Chamber.' I understand my noble Lord and friend is now engaged upon writing a sequel to that book, the title of which, I understand, is, 'The Danger is Now Removed'." (Laughter.)

There was another political anecdote which came to my ears the other day, and which I pass on to you for what it is worth. It has not been through Shaw's mill yet, so I will tell Mr. Microphone that I do not guarantee its truth. The Government were giving a reception or something of the kind at which dancing took place. Mr. Arthur Henderson, the British Foreign Secretary, was present, as were Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw, but the latter were not dancing; they were sitting at the side of the room watching the fun. Mr. Henderson, however, was dancing, and as you know he is a man who is big rather than small, and no longer in his first youth or girth. (Laughter.) Mrs. Shaw was very quiet for a few moments as she watched the gyrations of the British Foreign Secretary round the ball room. Finally she turned to her husband and said, "That is a very curious dancing movement of Mr. Henderson's", and Bernard Shaw said, "That is not a dancing movement; that's the Labour Movement." (Great Laughter.)

And now let us touch very shortly on a subject which clearly comes within the province of this talk's title-war. I do think we ought to take our hats off to Bernard Shaw for having thought thirty years ago what the civilized world, in its attitude to war, is only beginning to think today. I imagine that the mental attitude of Arms and The Man (written in the '90's) is, roughly speaking, exactly the same as that shown in the best sellers of today. We should not take any notice of them if they were not best sellers, but best sellers presumably reflect true popular opinion. The best sellers on the stage--such as "Journey's End", "What Price Glory?"--and the big sellers on the books stalls--"The Case of Sergeant Grischa", "All Quiet on the Western Front" and others--all, in these days of mechanized fighting, treat war as a disease and seek to strip it of glory. Bernard Shaw certainly perceived the prosaic muddiness of war, and had a whack at what all the statesmen are having a whack at now, beating them to it by thirty years. But I feel, and I think many of us must feel, that when we are trying to disarm, it becomes a question of noble sentiments versus hard brute facts; and here Bernard Shaw comes to the rescue in his usual way, by saying things that we do not like to say, because we do not like to throw things at the man at the piano, who, after all, is doing his best. (Laughter.) Bernard Shaw has no compunction about throwing things at the man at the piano if he thinks that he is not playing the piano properly. That is one of Bernard Shaw's contributions to current topics, I think. I notice that a few days ago, apropos of the present Naval Disarmament Conference, he said, "It is all right; the sailors will be able to sleep quite happily now, because they will not be killed at 20 miles range by 15 inch guns; they will be killed at 10 miles range by 10 inch guns!"

Well, I do not think we need to be frightened of Bernard Shaw any more. He can stand up there as solemnly as he likes and say that he is a Bolshevik, but we need not be frightened of him, because we have seen that he can do us no harm; on the contrary, he can do us good by making us alternately laugh and think. Indeed, he is more than a statesman or a politician or a mere public thinker; he is a natural historian. I am going to read you a little passage which I think you may value because it puts the whole thing in a nutshell; but before I read it I would just say that Bernard Shaw always uses the words "moral" and "immoral" in the classic sense (the Latin word mores meaning customs if I remember right) instead of in the limited vulgar sense, by which we mean that a moral man is merely a man who does not run off with somebody else's wife, and an immoral man is a man who does. (Laughter.) That is not the exclusive meaning in which Bernard Shaw uses the words. When Shaw contemplates us we are to him, not twentieth-century creatures as distinct from nineteenth-century, nor Anglo-Saxons as distinct from Slavs or Latins--for you remember his first acclamation was in Germany, and the first production of "The Apple Cart" took place in Polandnor as rich men with university educations as distinct from poor men with state elementary educations. He regards us as none of those, but simply as natural specimens of the genus homo, naked, unashamed, unhumbugged, each of us given a chance by God. This will perhaps help us to grasp better Shaw's own unequivocal declaration. In a letter some years ago to H. M. Hyndman, of Belgium, Bernard Shaw wrote, "I am a moral revolutionary, interested not in class-war but in the struggle between human vitality and the artificial system of morality, and distinguishing not between capitalist and proletarian, but between moralist and natural historian." I think those are very succinct and very wise words as an effort on his part to make his position clear as a member of the human race and of the British Empire, as a citizen of London, and even as the husband of his wife.

I will just end up by telling you a few Shavian anecdotes which came to my ears since our visit to Toronto last year. Some of them you may have heard. When he was a musical critic an old lady of London town thought she had discovered a new violinist, and invited all the bigwigs and critics of London to a reception. The violinist was to be there launched into society, and so into the world. After he had played for them the hostess went around her guests smiling and pleased, and asking what they thought of the new violinist. She came to Bernard Shaw finally and said, "Now, Mr. Shaw, what do you think of Mr. So-and-so?"-I don't know the name of the violinist, because I don't think he ever appeared again. (Laughter.) Bernard Shaw smiled at her and said, "Well, you know, Mrs. So-and-so, he reminds me very much of Paderewski." After a moment of very natural nonplussment the lady said, "Oh, but, Mr. Shaw, Paderewski is not a violinist!"--and Bernard Shaw said, "Just so; just so." (Laughter.)

I suppose it was when Bernard Shaw was a musical critic, and therefore a member of the press, and therefore -lucky manable to go to an opera, a concert or a recital for nothing, just having to produce his press card and step right in-that he was walking along a London side street one day where a barrel organ was performing, with an old Italian organ grinder, and a monkey all dressed up, sitting on the top of the organ. The organ was grinding out some ghastly apology for a tune, and, as Bernard Shaw was about to pass, the organ grinder took off his greasy cap and held it out for a copper; and Bernard Shaw said, "Press!" and passed on. (Laughter.) It is perhaps very unfair, especially in view of my friend Mr. Microphone, to end the story there, because I believe, on the best authority, that Bernard Shaw, having had his moment of joie de vivre, went back and placed a coin in the greasy cap. (Laughter.)

Last year I told the story about the famous international dancer, but I feel bound, for her memory's sake and for Bernard Shaw's sake, to read to you the true version as it comes almost hot from the press and from Bernard Shaw's own spidery, marginal corrections: "' 'here is a story of Shaw and a beautiful lady (often erroneously identified with the late Isadora Duncan). She had written to the famous writer pointing out that he had the finest brain and she the finest body in the world, and proposing, for the sake of posterity, that they should unite to produce a wonderchild inheriting her beauty and his brains. This was too much for the author of Man and Superman, and creator of Ann Whitefield, and Shaw replied, on a postcard as usual, 'Ah, but suppose it were to inherit my beauty and your brains!"' (Laughter.)

Gentlemen, I must end and sit down very shortly. I do so with great reluctance, because I am not thinking of you at all. I am selfish enough to be thinking of myself, and to be realizing what a very pleasant and happy time I am having, even in spite of the fact that I am standing upon my legs, which is an uncomfortable posture for a human; but I am so enjoying your company and your hospitality that I am glad, for your sake, that my watch is sitting in front of me. I understand that I am causing the proceedings to end, as far as I am concerned, a little earlier than is customary on these occasions, but I know you will excuse me when I say that I have to be not only in the theatre, but actually on the stage at twenty minutes past two, and that it is now just ten minutes to two. So I ask you to excuse me if I sit down and thank you very much for listening to me so very patiently. (Loud applause.)

THE CHAIRMAN voiced the thanks of the Club to the speaker for his entertaining address.