If he condemns the irresponsibility of faith,
he condemns with a sane consistency the equal irresponsibility of art.
He has pleased all the bohemians by saying that women are equal to men;
but he has infuriated them by suggesting that men are equal to women.
He is almost mechanically just; he has something of the terrible
quality of a machine. The man who is really wild and whirling,
the man who is really fantastic and incalculable, is not Mr. Shaw,
but the average Cabinet Minister. It is Sir Michael Hicks-Beach who
jumps through hoops. It is Sir Henry Fowler who stands on his head.
The solid and respectable statesman of that type does really
leap from position to position; he is really ready to defend
anything or nothing; he is really not to be taken seriously.
I know perfectly well what Mr. Bernard Shaw will be saying
thirty years hence; he will be saying what he has always said.
If thirty years hence I meet Mr. Shaw, a reverent being
with a silver beard sweeping the earth, and say to him,
"One can never, of course, make a verbal attack upon a lady,"
the patriarch will lift his aged hand and fell me to the earth.
We know, I say, what Mr. Shaw will be, saying thirty years hence.
But is there any one so darkly read in stars and oracles that he will
dare to predict what Mr.
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