SHAW IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 80, 1 October 1931, Page 24

SHAW IN RUSSIA

A FIERY OUTBURST

RIFLES THE ARGUMENT

' «;WOEX HAKD AND ;;p SUCCEED"

■ Qeorge Bernard Shaw celebrated his fceyenty-flfth birthday by a red hot speech at an entertainment given in his honour in the Moscow Hall of Columns where the treason trials are held, says the "New York Times." Ho began with the word "Tovarishi" (Comrades), which aroused yaat applause, and then added in English: <'That 3b the only Russian word I know, and I have grown fond of it since my; stay hero. I want to express thanks and personal feelings on the part of myße-lf and my friends for your •welcome. Some of them, Lord and Lady Astor and the Earl of Lothian, are capitalists and landowners on a vast scale. It is not their fault; they cannot alter that. But the British proletariat will alter it, and the proletariat bf the whole world. .;• *< On leaving for Russia we were iiVon supplies of food and bedding and pillows by weeping relatives who warned vb we would be killed or starve here. The nearer we got to the border the more we tbiew out the windows. It is; .hard to expross the gratitude for what your Government has done to make us happy and comfortable; If it «an make the people equally happy, —hichll lelieVe is its object, this will 'lte a fortunate country. TOR TEN YEARS. : •'Previous speakers expressed the nope that when-I-return to England I *hall tell them of what I nave seen and of my confidence in your. success. I nave been telling them that since tea years ago. Ia 1918 I sent Lenin a book with an enthusiastic dedication. Even then T believed you would win. "The reason of this,visit is not to learn something I did not know before, "but- to reply to those•= who I had iot seen what I told them; 'Yes, I hive, and I know they -will yrm.' ; **We are going back much, impressed. Ydta have come face to face ■ with real things hore and we have seen it.; I have seen, too, real person^ who before were only names to me: Lunatcharsky, jn Whom I found, and only in him and the Russians, the power and subtlety to deal adequately with my works, and Litvinoff. ■ ; ■ .• ■ ■ "I injtend Stalin to be real also to me before I leave, so if any of you know him, well, please tell him so. "Some of us foreigners ask why did fait England begin this instead of RusWa. Marx said the advanced, capitalist state would be the first to make a Communist revolution. The English should be ashamed of themselves not to be tbß first, and the other Western iations, too. When you have finished your job and . succeeded there will be d hurry to follow your example. It is tip" to you to work hard and succeed quickly so they will have do other choice but. to follow." ; ; S PROUD,'Oli yiSETORS. . When there is a special visit like that tof ..the Shaw-Astpr party .the Soviet passion to interest, elevate, and instrnet strangers within its gates gets free play. Because here the Soviet'! delight in its possessions is combined ■with the pride of the lion-hunting hostess who has obtained a noble bag. -The visitors' reaction, is interesting and varied. Mr. Shaw plays thaf game ■with gusto. He seems to defy faflgue, and his bright, blue eyes glitter with jnalicious enjoyment. This eminent patriarch, now in the full wealth of honours, haa a bitter core of rebel and revolutionary in his own Irish heart. He is fundamentally and utterly cynical, but has been.saved from sourness and a crabbed old age by his absorbing interest in life and human ways,, at which he gibes. / The stupendons /upset here of all that the rest of the world- admires and the -fierce heat of the new creation that ia Bussia to-day wanna his •hill heart to chuckling remarks like, "It is a pity they can't do something ike this in England," orf" Nothing like making a good clean sweep of your, opponents; iifi.es are <ai argujnent to which'there is noansw.er." ■ perhaps it is more than as .an Irishman or a revolutionary that there isfakinship in Shaw to the; Bolsheviks, because he is such a 100 per- cent, person, and they, too, are Iso wholeheartedly ruthless and contemptuous of itnj opinions save their own; f liADT1 ASTOR DIFPBRBNT. tiady Astor sees it differently. Intensely warm-hearted, with an honest sympathy for the under dog; anywhere, she is torn between pity and indignatibn over the plight of the "former people" and those who; come in conflict with the Soviet regime, and admiratioa'for what is being done in education, hygiene, and welfare, work. She believes in free speech, and is herself outspoken, -which puzzles; and sometimes dismays her Russian hosts,,; who have mo conception of the former and con■Sder the latter dangerous. . ; . v She inveighs against the . Russian Custom of telling the visitor, what they think he wants to hear-ror ought to hear—rather than the stark truth, not ieilising, as Mr. Shaw-admitted, that share this quality'with the people ' of: Ireland, partly fromi:. politeness, partly from native ; astuteness, and partly because; of centuries of oppression.' ''. '.. :' ■.'■;■: . ; Viscount Astor keeps his own counsel lit the most part, but asks shrewd questions about the mechanism of State industry, finance, and business,^ and the reasons for or against collectivisation from the peasants';angle. Another silent observer is the Earl of Lothian, formerly Philip Kerr; "David lOoyd George's Colonel House" during the World War, who is regarded as one of -the keenest brains in the British Empire. Soon after his arrival Lord Lothian remarked quietly that this country was animated .by war psychology. ' . WAR TENSION. ,; "Indeed, the whole atmosphere is one •f the tightest war tension, like England in 1917 and 1918,'^'to continued, liord Lothian also said-conjuiunism had many of the elements of a new fanatic religion, and that in judging Russia one xnust remember Asia no less orl even Jnore than Europe. .Hio three points seem to this correspondent, after ten years' experience, to be the chief master keys to the solution of the Bolshevik enigma to-day. - ; More than 1000 American visitors came to Moscow in seven days, most on cruises of the liners Reliance and Carinthia, who arrived here on Special trains from Leningrad, and the others in.a number of Open Road parties and on conducted tours. '■ The Soviet Intourist handles them all on inclusive rates at Varying cost, according to the length of the tour and the quality of accommodation, providing transport, hotels, food, interpreters, autos, and access _to the Kremlin and other points of interest. The first visit generally is to Lenin's mausoleum, of which Mr. Shaw said the other day in his talkie at Leningrad, "Henceforth Napoleon's tomb ranks second instead of first in human interest." NAIVE PRIDE. The visitors generally start full of {■guiMM and energy but-gradually:

acquire a jaded appearance under, the plethora of new sights and the voluble if sometimes inaccurate information of guides who are unfamiliar with conditions and food. The Soviet has a somewhat peculiar attitude toward foreign visitors. In all fairness it must be admitted the money they bring in is not the first consideration, although every scrap of foreign exchange is welcome to help meet commitments abroad. Tho Soviet views the tourists with something of the naive pride felt by a man who has inherited or acquired ancient property which he is making over to suit his own ideas, mingled with' the feeling that each one of them is a sort of potential missionary to.carry to tho world tidings that the Soviet Union is an up and coming progressive country instead of the hell of mud and bipod its adversaries contend. The Intourist, like all new organisations, has a determination that nothing save physical collapse shall 'hinder tho visitor -from seeing every last thing that can be jammed in his time schedule. The visitors cause some bewilderment to Russians because the foreign bourgeois, whohas been reported in the last stages of decay, still looks happy and prosperous. Feminine Russians envy the visitors' clothes. - \ SHAW DOZES. George Bernard Shaw also celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday by going to the horse races—the first he ever saw —and falling asleep. Ho nodded once or. twice:in the box ho occupied with his party at the race track on the outskirts of Moscow, and finally took a good nap, with his chin on his chest; while Lady Astor fanned the flies away from, his -face with a , brilliantly coloured scarf. v Weariness'rather than boredom forced the-Irish sage to doze. He. had been on the move steaflily all day after an overnight train ride from Leningrad, and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was tired. \ ' - ■ . He refused to say much about his reaction to the races, but he seemed to enjoy those he saw. On the way to the racetrack he observed to one of his Russian hosts: • , - ■: ■ "I suppose there will be only p:ie horse in the-race, since there is no competition in a Socialist State. , ■ Asked how he felt at reaching 75, he s siid: "I don't know.. I stopped observing birthdays when I was'7o.