The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1915. UNPATRIOTIC FOLLY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 59, 12 March 1915, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1915. UNPATRIOTIC FOLLY.

It is by no means surprising to find that the Germans are circulating Bernard Shaw's foolish pamphlet on the war in their country, and are pretending to believe it sets out truthfully the outlook of tho English people. It is a great pity this vain nororiety-hunter, who has in his past vagaries been merely laughed at in the tolerant manner of •our race, could not he brought to book. He has, reputedly, made a fortune by charlatanism, and in his fervent anxiety to be heard of, must needs take the intolerable course ho now has done. Mr H. G. Wells takes this unpatriotic belittler of England severely to task in the following terms: "I have been quite exceptionally and generously disposed to take him seriously and find out what he amounts to, and this is what I find he amounts to. He is an activity, a restless passion for attention. Behind that is a kind of jackdaw's hoard of other people's notions; much from Samuel Butler; scraps of pseudo-philosophical phraseology such as that 'Life Force' .phrase he got from Dr. Cuest; old Hammersmith economics; worn fragments of Herbert Spencer; some Nietzsche, convoyed, no doubt, from the convenient handbook of Mr Orage; shreds of theosophy: current superstitions, as for example, his idea that fear 'poisons' meat, or that wool is a more 'natural' and hygienic clothing than cotton; sweepings of all sorts of 'advanced' rubbish; but nothing anywhere of which one can say, 'Here is the thought of a man.' . . And nothing will stop him. All through the war we shall have this Shavian accompaniment going on,' like an idiot child screaming in a hospital, distorting, discrediting, confusing." Mr Wells has done the community a service in telling what he finds this poser amounts to. But he will, like the "idiot child," probably go on screaming, until somebody becomes sufficiently annoyed to wring his neck!