By George Bernard Shaw In a cablegram to THE NEW YORK TIMES, dated July 17, 1915, it is reported that an article by George Bernard Shaw in The New Statesman begins with a review of Professor Gilbert Murray's book, "The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey," and ends with the following characteristic reference to himself: "Like other Socialists, I have been too much preoccupied with the atrocities of peace and the problems they raise to pay due attention to the atrocities of war, but I have not been unconscious of the European question and I have made a few shots at solutions from time to time. None of these have been received with the smallest approval, but at least I may be permitted to point out that they have all come out right. "I steadily ridiculed anti-armament agitation, and urged that our armaments should be doubled, trebled, quadrupled, as they might have been without costing the country one farthing that we were not wasting in the most mischievous manner. "I said that the only policy which would secure the peace of Europe was a policy of using powerful armament to guarantee France against Germany and Germany against Russia, aiming finally at a great peace insurance league of the whole northwest of Europe with the United States of America in defense of Western democratic civilization against the menace of the East and possible crusades from primitive black Christians in Africa. "When the war broke out I said some more things which were frantically contradicted and which have all turned out to be precisely true. I set the example of sharp criticism of the Government and the War Office, which was denounced as treasonable and which now proves to be the only way of saving our army from annihilation, the Government having meanwhile collapsed and vanished, as every ordinarily self-possessed person foresaw that it must. "One fact seems established by this beyond doubt; to wit, that I am the gravest public danger that confronts England, because I have the strange power of turning the nation passionately away from the truth by the simple act of uttering it. The necessity for contradicting me, for charging heroically in the opposite direction to that pointed out by me, is part of the delirium of war fever. "Sir Edward Grey, on the other hand, is spoken well of by all men, but he, too, is the victim of a mysterious fate. He is, as Professor Murray has repeatedly testified, the most truthful of men, yet he never opens his mouth without deceiving us. He is the most loyal of simple, manly souls, yet he is accused of betraying every country and every diplomatist who trusted him. He is the kindest of men, and yet he has implicated us in the tortures of Denshawai and brought upon us the slaughters of Armageddon. "Clearly, there are two men in England who must be sent into permanent retirement. Depend on it, there is something fundamentally wrong with them. It is a pity, for they are stuffed with the rarest of virtues-though I say it, who should not. One of them is Sir Edward Grey and the other is G. B. S." |