IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 222, 24 September 1943, Page 12

IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER?

Ask G. B. Shaw and C. E. M. Joad

} [N a recent issue of "The Listener," G.M. suggested that the disappearance of duelling was one of the many answers that could be given to those who argue that human nature does not change. An issue of the "New Statesman’ that has since reached us carries the discussion a little further; and since those taking part in it are two of the most famous controversialists in England, we extract passages for the benefit of our own readers, It will of course be understood that to condense such men is in some respects to misrepresent them, The "New Statesman" discussion was begun by Joad, who. contributed an inaginary dialogue between himself and Shaw. This was shown to Shaw, who replied in about a thousand words, We quote about halt of each contribution.

Imaginary Dialogue OAD: "You know, Shaw, I am and have always been one of your most enthusiastic disciples, I grew up in a world, the world of 1910- ‘| 1914, in which all advanced young men who knew what politically was what acknowledged you as their natural leader, Socialism seemed just round the corner, a corner which, marching gaily under the Shavian banner, we were about to turn. For me, then, and for many like me, you were never just a playwright who succeeded in producing plays which were more or less entertaining; you were a philosopher and a prophet who preached the gospel of a new world. Nor have the 30 years that have since elapsed shown us your equal in any one of these departments. This verdict is amply borne out by Hesketh Pearson’s book, from the pages of which you emerge as large as life, and if possible, twice as natural." SHAW: "Yes, it is a good biography. I wrote most of it myself." JOAD (lyrically): "What a stream of ideas, what a flow of wit, what speeches, what letters, what gorgeous conversations, and, as a consequence, what exhilaration in the reader who gets a glimpse of life lived at a higher potential than he has known in himself or his fellows. And yet, and yet, when I put it down I was sensible of a feeling of depression." SHAW: "A dull dog, eh?" JOAD: "Not at all. My depression was rooted not in me, but in the times. It was the contrast between the effort and its result that depressed me. Such an appearance of achievement, so vast a listening public, so apparently respectful a world--and then look at the world!" SHAW: "TI deluged the public with novelties. You cannot expect my gospel to be assimilated in a mere 60 years or so by a race as incorrigibly thick-headed as the English." _ JOAD: "But they have assimilated it, or so they believe. The young maintain that they know all your ideas inside out, and regard you as an entertaining old buffer announcing periodpiece platitudes and striking period-piece attitudes." SHAW (chuckling): "That is because they owe whatever they have got in the way of minds to me. I have tinted the intellectual spectacles of this generation. so, naturally enough, when they look out on the world they see everything in my colours. It is the Nemesis that waits upon the man who tells the truth for the first time that after a time people think they have always known what he told them." JOAD: "Perhaps. But you are evading the main point which is the spectacle

presented by the contemporary world. How much of your teaching do you suppose has been learnt by the world today? And by ‘learnt’ I don’t only mean accepted in theory, but acted on in practice." SHAW: "Far more than you seem to think. Have you read ‘the Labour Party’s pamphlet on the Old World and the New Society?" JOAD: "T have glanced at it." SHAW: "Have you, indeed! Very good of you I’m sure. If you were to take the trouble to read it properly, instead of merely glancing at it, you would find it full of Shavings." JOAD: "Yes, of course I agree that in a lot of small, incidental ways, the world to-day is saner, more humane, and less prejudiced than when you began to preach to it, and I should be the last to belittle the share which your teaching has had in producing enlightment. "But it is at the overall picture that I would have you look. Who said, for example, ‘a civilisation cannot progress without criticism, and must, therefore, to save itself from stagnation and putre faction, declare impunity for criticism’? Do you find that that condition of civilisation is satisfied in the contemporary world? SHAW: "You forget there is a war on, and wars always run dramatically to legs and teeth." JOAD: "But it was in the ’twenties that you yourself were apologising to posterity ‘for living in a country where the capacity and tastes of schoolboys (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) and sporting costermongers are the measure of Metropalitan culture.’ " SHAW; "That was 20 years ago." Who Will Carry Shaw’s Coffin? JOAD: "Are we grown better since? Let me put the point in another way. Hesketh Pearson’s book contains an account of the funeral of Thomas Hardy in 1928 when you and Kipling and Gosse and Galsworthy and Barrie and A. E. Housman acted as pall-bearers. A very intriguing account it is,.too, Now let us suppose that you are dead, and that, by some caprice of official taste, your remains ate impounded to follow those of Hardy into Westminster Abbey. Who would there be to act as pallbearers for you?": SHAW: "What about yourself?" JOAD; "Please be serious. I am suggesting that concurrently with, and in spite of, the popularity of your ideas which, as you say, tinted the whole intellectual outline of a generation, a process of de-civilisation has been at work in the world. In witness, I cite the decline in the general level of literary and dramatic taste, the continuous erosion of the environment in which alone original thought and work in literature and art can be recognised and encouraged. You counter by telling me that the great man must make his own way and create his own public, as you had to do. Very possibly, but where are the great men to do it? Where are the equivalent six pall-bearers of 1943? There’s E. M. Forster, I suppose; Priestley, admitted rather grudgingly; T. S. Eliot possibly, and Wells, if he’s still alive and kicking, and the Abbey will have him..Oh, and of course, there is Somerset Maugham, though I expect both Wells and Maugham would sooner see themselves dead than set foot in the Abbey." SHAW: "That’s precisely what they will have to do." JOAD: "TI beg you to be serious. My point is that whatever you may think of my five, they are none of them chickens. Where are the new men?" SHAW: "You want too much * for your money. Remember this is only the fag-end of a dialogue by you, in which, incidentally, I notice you have given yourself all the best things to say. What you want is an article by me." JOAD: "By all means. Let us have it." Mr. Shaw Responds AM. not at all dashed by the fact il that my preachings and prophetisings, like those of the many sages who have said the same things before me, seem to have produced no political change — that, as Joad says, the world has been going from bad to worse since I gave tongue and pen. Now it is true that the England of Pecksniffs and Podsnaps has not become an England of Ruskins and Bernard Shaws. It is equally true; and far more deplorable, that government by adult suffrage has made democraey impossible. Now that the political ignorance of Everywoman has been enfranchised and added to the political ignorance and folly of Everyman, and Government is by Anybody chosen by Everybody, both Joad and I may be thankful that we are at the mercy of Mr. Winston Churchill rather than of Titus Oates or Horatio Bottomley. ... As to equality, Joad has not gone far enough into its practice. Stalin is as

impatient of Equality Merchants, as he calls them, as of Trotskyist World Revolutionists, Currency Cranks, and, in general, Lefts who are never right. All I contributed to the ancient theme was that without sufficient equality of income to make all classes intermarriageable a stable society is impossible, and that the notion that merit can be equated with money by any sort of economic algebra is silly, and can be exploded by asking its dupes to pre-

scribe in figures the ideal incomes for the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mr. Joseph Louis. But to give everybody an equal. share of the national income tvday would reduce us all to such overcrowded poverty that science, art, and philosophy would be impossible. Civilisation would perish, and with it most of the people. In Russia they can maittain their Socialism only by paying their directors and experts 10 times as much as they can spare for the rank and file of the labourers. It is the business of the favoured ones to work up production until there is enough to afford the tenfold figure for everybody. Theu, and then only, can intermarriageable equality become possible; and when that is achieved, ftlobody will bother more about mathematical equality of income than they do now in the rich sections, where ten thousand a year can intermarry with fifty thousand without friction. Enough is enough: when there is plenty for everybody, nobody will listen to the Exact Equality Merchants. Only One Deadly Disease So buck up; Joad. There is only one deadly disease: discouragement. Even if the Soul of Man cannot march as far as your thought and mine can reach, the resources of the Holy Ghost are not yet demonstrably exhausted. When Ibsen was invited to assume a Party label, he replied that he had both the Left and the Right in him, and was glad to have his ideas adopted by any party. I find myself very much in the same position, and am sometimes sur? prised and amused as I go farther and farther to the Left, to find that the world is round and that the extreme Left is the old Right with its nonsense ‘and corruption cleaned off. What are the New Order, the Atlantic Charter, the International Council, the New Commonwealth, the Co-operative Commonwealth and the rest, but’ the latest calls for a Holy Catholic Church? Stalin’s mother was not far wrong when

she tried to make him a priest, seeing that he has made himself a Pope more mighty than his Roman rival. I wonder has Joad ever asked himself how much he believes of the Apostles’ Creed? In our nonage we should both have said "Not a word of it." But I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, and the Life Everlasting. Does Joad say Amen?