WHAT SHAW KNOWS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1933, Page 13

WHAT SHAW KNOWS

MORE ABOUT: AMERICA

THAN ITS OWN INHABITANTS

JIEW AND INTERVIEW

United Press Association—By Electric Tola-

grapU—Copyright.

(Eeceived March 25, 11 a.m.)

SAN FEANCISCO, March 24.

Mr. George Bernard Shaw arrived on. the United States mainland on Friday for the first time with the abrupt' announcement that he knew more of America than its inhabitants. He told mass interviewers and cameramen that Americans elected their public officials because their candidates had pictures taken with a baby in their arms.

During a discussion of the Tom Mooney case (Mooney was . convicted of participation in .the Preparedness Day parade bombing' in San Francisco in 1916), Mr. Shaw that Americans were romanticists in their treatment of the whole criminal system. "I hesitate to express an opinion regarding Mooney. Generally, I would say that to bury a maa alive in a vault for seventeen years is extremely foolish." -

The United States, Mr. Shaw said, was a drinking nation, because it was an unhappy nation. A. rsiek man is given chloroform for an. operation, tut in. your crowded cities -when, a man gets sick from excessive hours of labour he, takes alcohol."

Turning to Europe;-: he said: "I don't know ; how Hitler will turn out. The whole of the German' people are in a state of suspense and chaos. They are trying out Hitler, just as you aro trying out Roosevelt. In' four years I shall be able to tell yon about them." Sir. Shaw accused the American people of giving no thought to qualifications for their, officials. ""Why," he said, "it was Eoosevelt's baby that got him elected."

"But Eoosevelt had no baby," an interviewer said. • " ' .

"Well, that's serious," replied Mr. Shaw. "Then whose baby was it that Boosevelt was photographed "with?" Other Shavianisms■ were: "Lenin was the greatest man since George Washington." "Six or seven civilisations have progressed to our piano and then collapsed to the grass." "Man as a political animal is not capable of solving the problems created by himself." "Periodically we have brilliant attempts at suicide-such as we started in 1914,. but I am. not greatly excited about another war immediately." "I first read about technocracy fifty years ago. lam hardly up-to-date enough on it now to talk."

Mr. Shaw proceeded to San Simeon as the guest of Mr. William Randolph Hearst before joining the- ship at San Pedro to continue his round the world cruise. He came here from Honolulu.