AN UNSOCIAL SOCIALIST.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9412, 5 April 1909, Page 7

AN UNSOCIAL SOCIALIST.

Aa a Socialist; Mr George Bernard Shaw seems to have one serious defect—an inability to become a complainant member of a uniform herd. To imagine Mr Shaw submitting calmly to the regulation of his daily life by someone else is quite impossible. Mr Chesterton might say that G. B. S. had really a strong ’ infusion of individualism in his character. It is amusing to find Mr Shaw saying exactly what he thinks of the recent Labour Conference at Portsmouth, at which he was present. How be came to hi there is not stated. The organisation that sedt him must be feeling rather sorry now. “ A mess of slovenly resolutions, silly resolutions, and even spiteful resolutions was set before ns ; - and we had either to speak to them or hold our tongues,” he writes. “Is there a living man stupid enough to be unable to see that discussion is of no use unless the people who discuss are free to change their minds in the light of the new facts and considerations orcnght out by the discussion? He uses a very amusing illustration to show the working of the system by which each delegate is a-mere machine to record the vote of the district unit that elected him. There is, he supposes, a rumour that he, Mr Shaw, is dead, and the various societies instruct their delegates to have him buried in Westminster Abbey. The delegates meet, and Mr Shaw, being not dead, but very much alive, appears among them. Does itiinake any difference to the business of the meeting? Not a bit of it. The-delegates are there to do the bidding of their various “primaries,” and Mr Shaw must be buried. So the eminent Socialist is carried off to Westminster Abbey, shrieking and struggling, and protesting violently that he is alive, and because the district units have ordered it, is buried alive iu the great fane, it is really excellent fooling, this nightmare of Mr Shaw’s, suggested by bis experience at Portsmouth. His opinion on “The Red Flag,” the international song of Socialism, is simply biaspfaemons. “Tbat ignoble air will be the death of Socialism in England if it is not sternly suppressed. The composer, whoever he may be (and I don’t bare if he is my best friend) can republish it as the Funeral March of a Fried Eel if he likes; but let him take it out of our already sufficiently obstructed path. The English Socialists do not seem to be a very happy family.