PLAIN ENGLISH

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE ACADEMY

London, England

24 July 1920

(page 52)

LIFE AND LETTERS.

THE REAL SHAW.

From The Daily Express of last Saturday, we cull the following paragraph:—

“G. B. S.” ASTONISHES AMERICA.

KING POLISHING THE KAISER’S BOOTS.

Mr. Bernard Shaw’s farce, “O’Flaherty, V.C.”—loudly heralded as the play which was prohibited in England—has just been produced in New York by the Celtic Players. “It was a strange experience,” says a critic, “to sit in an audience and hear spirited applause greet a picture of the Kaiser dining at Buckingham Palace while King George polishes his boots. . . .”

Years ago, in The Academy, we pointed out over and over again, to a purblind public, the true inwardness of this man Bernard Shaw. When the war came he showed himself unblushingly in his true colours as a virulent pro-German and a hater and despiser of Great Britain. It is the incredible fact that Mr. Lloyd George’s Government actually sent him to the front as a guest of the British Army, with a view, we suppose, of propitiating him and gaining his “moral support” for the cause of the Allies. Mr. Shaw went to the front and returned with an even greater contempt for Great Britain and the Army, and to do him justice he took no pains to disguise his feelings. He has now “put the lid” on his performances by the disgusting insult which the daily Express retails without comment. His bosom friend Frank Harris, the renegade, for whose obscene book on Wilde Shaw recently wrote a preface, has been in the United States for five years. He can never return to England because, apart from the fact that there is a criminal prosecution awaiting him the moment he sets foot in this country, he would almost certainly be lynched if he attempted to show his face in London. We suggest that the time has now come when Shaw should join his friend Harris in the States, when he would doubtless be welcomed on the staff of the Satanist journal the International, to which we referred last week, and which is jointly edited by the German Viereck [George Sylvester Viereck] and the unspeakable Aleister Crowley, who is also “wanted” by the police in London. Meanwhile, we take it that all decent people in London will combine to make it impossible for any of Shaw’s plays to be given in any London theatre. We presume that there is some limit to what British complacency will tolerate, even from a licensed buffoon. That limit we now declare has been reached. Shaw must go. We invite suggestions for a practical demonstration of British feeling on this point which will have the effect of shifting the gentleman out of the country.