the thick of
it. Whenever he rises to speak, he is supreme. He sweeps away all the
false issues in a few sentences; he attacks the very heart of the
problem under discussion, and makes the most practical proposals. He
can cover a hostile argument with ridicule, and drive it out of the
field with good-tempered laughter. But his method is not only that of
raillery. He is remorselessly logical. He can pursue the logical
sequence of his case, and set it forth with a fusillade of perfectly
relevant and illuminating instances and analogies. He never loses his
thread like Mr. Chesterton; he never wanders off into vague rhetoric
like Mr. Wells. He chases his enemies and his subject until he has
subdued the first and set forth the second so that it shines with
crystal clearness. There is no man in England who can state a case, on
the platform or in the Press, with such perfect lucidity, such logical
order, with such brightness and lightness, or with such force as Mr.
Bernard Shaw. He is the greatest debater in England, the greatest
pamphleteer, the most observable personality in public life.

That is not all. As an organiser there is no one who has more driving
power. He can set himself to committee work, and keep every member of
a committee active, himself included. He can, when necessary, pester
responsible persons till they are goaded into action. Whilst his
attention is always fixed on the central object, he has an eye for the
most trifling details.

He is a first-rate business man. He knows as much about the trade of
publishing as any publisher. He refuses to employ a literary agent,
and personally transacts the business of placing his work--and
sometimes that of his friends--in the literary and dramatic market all
over the world.

Also he is a man personally benevolent. No one was ever less
sentimental or romantic, but he is charitably disposed to everyone
whom he does not regard as a fool.

If we examine the records of Mr. Shaw's life we shall see that it has
been spent somewhere mid-way between the lives of the man-of-action
and the man-of-letters. He has been primarily and essentially a critic
of the current ideas about existing facts, the ideas which are
pre-supposed in the typical and habitual activities of our modern
world. He has been, almost invariably, a destructive critic--a critic
of that rare kind which is able to win attention because he himself is
so active in this Vandal work of his, because he can make