ributed. It is a proposal resting upon two principles,
unimpeachable as far as they go: first, that frightful human calamities
call for immediate human aid; second, that such aid must almost always
be collectively organised. If a ship is being wrecked, we organise a
lifeboat; if a house is on fire, we organise a blanket; if half a nation
is starving, we must organise work and food. That is the primary and
powerful argument of the Socialist, and everything that he adds to it
weakens it. The only possible line of protest is to suggest that it is
rather shocking that we have to treat a normal nation as something
exceptional, like a house on fire or a shipwreck. But of such things it
may be necessary to speak later. The point here is that Shaw behaved
towards Socialism just as he behaved towards vegetarianism; he offered
every reason except the emotional reason, which was the real one. When
taxed in a _Daily News_ discussion with being a Socialist for the
obvious reason that poverty was cruel, he said this was quite wrong; it
was only because poverty was wasteful. He practically professed that
modern society annoyed him, not so much like an unrighteous kingdom, but
rather like an untidy room. Everyone who knew him knew, of course, that
he was full of a proper brotherly bitterness about the oppression of the
poor. But here again he would not admit that he was anything but an
Economist.

In thus setting his face like flint against sentimental methods of
argument he undoubtedly did one great service to the causes for which he
stood. Every vulgar anti-humanitarian, every snob who wants monkeys
vivisected or beggars flogged has always fallen back upon stereotyped
phrases like "maudlin" and "sentimental," which indicated the
humanitarian as a man in a weak condition of tears. The mere personality
of Shaw has shattered those foolish phrases for ever. Shaw the
humanitarian was like Voltaire the humanitarian, a man whose satire was
like steel, the hardest and coolest of fighters, upon whose piercing
point the wretched defenders of a masculine brutality wriggled like
worms.

In this quarrel one cannot wish Shaw even an inch less contemptuous, for
the people who call compassion "sentimentalism" deserve nothing but
contempt. In this one does not even regret his coldness; it is an
honourable contrast to the blundering emotionalism of the jingoes and
flagellomaniacs. The truth is that the ordinary anti-humanitarian only
manages to hard