TWO IN ONE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2826, 20 December 1924, Page 4

TWO IN ONE.

THE SOVIET A>'D TTIE INTERNATIONAL. We learn from the daily Press that Mr Bernard Shaw, who was present recently as a guest at the Communist Red Levee which ''as held in London, has tendered some very plain, even caustic, advice to the Soviet Power in Russia. The “Daily Herald" has been granted exclusive privilege in publishing Mr Shaw’s letter which he sent by request to the Moscow ‘I%vestia.” This is but right as tho “Daily Herald” was at one time as sisted with finance by the Moscow Bolshcviki and a Literary Humourist was entitled to give it the first chance in exposing the sad failings of its Red friends abroad. The admission by Mr Shaw that the Third International, and that all-fired fulinitiator Zinovieff, wrecked the English elections for the Socialist Labour Party is at the same time an assumption that the pink Socialists of Britain were free from blame in tho tactics of “for and against the Nation” which they pursued. Such assumption, however, the great majority of British electors declined to recognise as vajjd. Of course a literary genius with capacity for making the most stupid paradox appear as if it were a logically reasoned conclusion has an advantage over ordinary persons the correctness of whose phrases are judged on the simple basis of how they square with known facts or the current methods of reasoning.

A giant intellect of the school to which Mr Shaw belongs need not trouble very much as to the accuracy of his assumptions but can give free play to the faculty of imagination as a means of instructing humanity.

We are told in this letter that “from the view point of English Socialists the Third International do not know the beginning of their business.” This is interesting to the non-Socialists. The question arises —what is their business? It appears to be the overturning of Society and the creating of mischief all round. They evidently do know the beginning of such destructive business from the widespread unrest they have ljeen creating, even in Mr Shaw’s highly respectable Socialist party. Of the end of the business who knows?

Are we to understand that the English Socialists can teach the Red International the business of revolution better than they know it already? If such is the case, the public will find it of advantage to give more attention to these “moderate” socialists whose genius for overturning is so great. THE VAST ASSUMPTION.

This letter of Mr Shaw bears the mark of a vast assumption which is most humorous from the standpoint of its unconscious simplicity. The Soviet, is advised in solemn terms to dissociate itself from the foolish and wicked international. It is remindful of advice given by Sydney Smith to a friend who was complaining of the heat in the “dog days” to strip off his flesh and sit in his bare bones.

Is it realised that what is here requested of the Reds in Moscow is that’the Soviet'leaders who are also the leaders of the Third International are I<> laugh at themselves, hold their "Bourgeois idealism” and childish inexperience in scorn, and finally we suppose, silves from themselves. This is the . ml of nonsense we get from the Socialist literary ganius who takes the role of “all knowing”—at once writer, dramatist, philosopher, economist, statesman, educationalist,.and beyond all, “humourist” —if at times unconscious.

The Soviet and the international are distinct and separate only in the same respect as the two faces of a had penny are. You may call them tlm head and the tail of bolshevism as we speak of the head and tail of a coin of the Realm. The two are in actuality one. To use separate names makes no distinction in the thing named when it is ' in principle and identity like a single person who bears a name and an alias, generally for purposes of deception. For all practical objects the Soviet is the alias of the International and vice versa. We have the same trick of names from the Reds in Mew Zealand where the same persons and principles masquerade as

"The Alliance of Labour” and “The New Zealand Labour Party.” To the leader of the “New Zealand Labour Party,” who declares himself a Marxian Socialist and contends that Maxianism is scientific, we commend the statement of Mr Shaw that “Wherever Socialism is a living force, it has left Marx as far behind as modern science has left Moses.”

Truly for a school of all wise thinkers these Socialists and Communists, Marxians and Fabians, show remarkable divergands on all points where they are supposed to ogxee. They aye all ready to recreate the Universe on better lines than deity even has laid down. It is only when they get to work that mankind discovers what prabbliug children they are after all. (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League).