before I voice my convictions. Even that smug heretic, Louis Untermeyer, who combines an erratic critical gift with unerring commercial instincts, in a book alleged to interpret the New Spirit in American literature, shrewdly contents himself with a sneering reference to me. I shall survive, even if I am ignored in anthologies and if little professors teach their scholars that, with the possible exception of Theodore Dreiser's, mine is "the vulgarest voice yet heard in American literature.”* IT T may be that the war psychosis will not endure forever, that even our Rip Van Winkles, as Shaw has aptly termed the editors of America, may discover, in the course of a decade or two, that the war is over. It may be that the true poets of America will drive from the temple those who betray the Muse into the hands of the moneylenders. It may be that the monstrous grasp that strangles all those who, while rendering homage to Shakespeare and to Swinburne, refuse to rise when the band plays "God Save the King," will be pried loose by a miracle! Fortunately, a writer in the English tongue (and I use more pens than one) is not confined to one continent. Life's paradoxes are more startling than Oscar Wilde's. And, paradoxically enough, war-racked *"On Contemporary Literature," by Stuart P. Sherman. Europe is more just in its attitude towards me than my American colleagues. Perhaps her intellectuals have a higher respect for the art of letters. Perhaps they are less swayed by the psychology of the mob. Englishmen of letters meet my arguments without deeming it necessary to proscribe my verse. When I called England "the Serpent of the Sea," the jovial heart of Gilbert K. Chesterton shook with Homeric laughter. His brother, Cecil, who, unlike our Vigilantes, sealed his loyalty with his life, challenged me to a debate. We met in honest combat, and after it was over we shook hands and drank large jugs of ale in the tap room of the Prince George. Israel Zangwill confesses, with his tongue in his cheek, in the "War for the World," that my Fatherland was one of the things that kept him pro-Ally; but he does not, because of political differences, abuse my lyrics. H. G. Wells takes me mildly to task now and then, without demanding my blonde Germanic head on a silver platter. And from France, France bled white by the war, Henri Barbusse sends me a message of appreciation! There is a certain poetic justice and poetic irony in the fact that the countries I attacked so bitterly are more generous in judging my point of view than my own countrymen. But, hold! I never attacked the France of Maeterlinck and Barbusse, of Verlaine and Villon. I opposed French Imperialism. I also op posed British Imperialism. German Imperialism appealed to me no more than British Imperialism or French Imperialism. I was fascinated by the romantic figure of William II. I glorified him, but only as the symbol of a nation embattled. I am not a monarchist. How could I be? Insurgency is bred in my bone. My father shared a German prison with Bebel. Liebknecht the elder and Auer were daily visitors to our house. My grandfather on my mother's side was one of the Germans who came to seek freedom under the Stars and Stripes in 1848. The blows I struck for Germany were not struck in defence of her feudal system. Similarly my shafts at Great Britain were never aimed at that "lyric England," to which I paid tribute in my first book of poems. Likewise, I never attacked the England of Chesterton, of Wells, of Zangwill, of Havelock Ellis, of Hardy and of Shaw. Τ 'HERE is no contemporary whom I admire more than the author of "Caesar and Cleopatra." Shaw is not only a matchless artist, but he is also, like Roosevelt, the mouthpiece of an epoch. I treasure his judgment, delivered December 1, 1918. He writes: You backed the wrong horse in 1914, but you have extricated yourself very cleverly; and there is plenty of common sense in your present attitude. Of course, I did not back the wrong horse. I backed the right horse, but the wrong jockey. The German people will justify my faith. When Uncle Sam entered the race, I backed both the right horse and the right jockey. I am proud that Bernard Shaw backed the same horse and the same jockey, even against Lloyd George. Of course, we must differentiate between Woodrow Wilson, the politician, and Woodrow Wilson, the spokesman of the hope of the world. The one may fail us. He may compromise. He may hedge. The other has planted a star in the firmament of mankind that even he himself cannot tear down from the heavens. It is to this star that we have hitched our wagon.* Theodore Roosevelt, unfortunately, resolutely shut his eyes to the new vision. Though a son of the New World, he made himself the mouthpiece of Old World Imperialism. The very title by which he preferred to be addressed was borrowed from the lexicon of militarism. George Bernard Shaw, who never set foot on American soil, speaks the language of the New World's Idealism. The difference between the two is the difference between the Hebrew prophets and Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt clamored for my expulsion from *This was written several months before Mr. Wilson's abject failure in Paris. The erstwhile Messiah stands revealed in the habiliments of Machiavelli, or lacking the subtlety of the Italian master of state-craft, as a disingenuous Don Quixote. Mr. Wilson betrayed the hope of the world with Fourteen Theses or, shall we say, with Fourteen-Kisses. A MESSAGE FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 10 ADELPHI TERRACE W.C.2. 10 th or any Jan, 1919 ther of the Auctions League Packey Society ngastigation expels a J of his political because or ther a member opinions, it thereby constitutes thelf a politicall wody whatever literary charter 'at may and have. Cifferature aut and science are pee of pontiers; and ane thope traitors who explant attend politically republic in of Art & Larice. Shaw རི་ ི་ལས་ འི་ཚ ་ |