SHAW ON CHURCHILL.

Shannon News, 6 May 1924, Page 4

SHAW ON C HURCHILL.

WHAT’S HE TALKING ABOUT?"

/ LONDON, April 13. “One of 'the' facts, threatening tho existence of this liappy-go-luchy na« tioa is that it is possible for such a distinguished member of the governing class as Mr Churchill to write about Socialism at this time of the day like an extremely decayed gentlewoman in a remote village in a prehistorically backward district in Poland.’’ _ . , „ Writing in the “Sunday Chronicle, Mr George Bernard Shaw made this , statement in reply to an attack on Socialism by Mr Winston Churchill. “He cannot plead that he was not warned,” Mr Shaw continued. "He lost the by-election for the Abbey division of Westminster by talking childish rubbish that every porter in Convent Garden knew to be childish rubbish. What docs lie mean by it? He is not a brainless parasite, like many of his y .\ class. On the contrary he is conspicuously clever. Why, then, does he, the moment Socialism or Russia are mentioned, lose his head, see scarlet, and become the most ridiculous tosh merchant of his class in Europe? “I wish he would answer satisfactorily or reconsider his attitude, because I have to argue with people who view the bourgeois aristocrat as Mi Churchill views the Bolshevik, who assure me that there is nothing to be done but exterminate them ruth, lessly to prevent them exterminating us

•'‘How cun 1 convince the Socialist diehards that Mr Churchill can be trusted t p keep to constitutional lines while he is raving in a manner winch would shock Robespierre? I am only pointing out tio Mr Churchill that if he persists 1 in lacing the main issues of modern politics in his present temper, he may bid good-bye to Parliament and choose between the dustbin and the organisation and leadership of the White Terror. • •‘Mr Churchill breaks into outspoken loathing at capitalism in its proletarian form—trade unionism. . '.heather your own nest and to h— with the public,’ is a game two can play. R is an odious game, and ruinous to the nation tolerating it,-but if Mr Churchill wants to convince us o.f his sincerity he must condemn the profiteer equally n’ith the profiteer’s employee. “I will put a question to Mr Church, ill. He had the job of bringing the British fleet! up to the scratch during the war. He now implies that it would have been done better by the Thames Steamboat Company. ~ “I think lie is unjust to himself anu his former department. Howeier, as* I suming t)liat he is right, and the Thames Company would have, sunk the Germans and finished the war in a i month, would they have done it without officials, without filling in forms, without dictating to anybody, without paying salaries, without making l><ofits from the country’s extremity, without controlling labour, twul without costing the taxpayer a farthing.' “If noti, what in the name of com moil sense does Air Churchill think hu is talking about?”