Mr. Shaw begins by conceiving the possibility of his being blinded by prejudice or perversity, and admits his capacity for criticising England with a certain slight malicious taste for taking the conceit out of her.  Seemingly he belongs to that numerous class who think that to admit a fault is to excuse it.  As a highwayman might say before taking your purse, “Now, I admit, I have a certain slight taste for thieving,” and expect you to smile forgiveness of his depredation, Shaw’s bias is evident wherever he discusses the action and qualities of Great Britain.  Thus he contrasts Bernhardi’s brilliant with our own very dull militarists’ facts, the result being that the intense mediocrity of Bernhardi leaps to the eye on every page, and that events have thoroughly discredited all his political and many of his military ideas, whereas we possess militarists of first-class quality.

Naturally, Shaw calls England muddle-headed.  Yet of late nothing has been less apparent than muddle-headednes.  Of British policy, Shaw says that since the Continent generally regards us as hypocritical, we must be hypocritical.  He omits to say that the Continent generally, and Germany in particular, regards our policy and our diplomacy as extremely able and clear-sighted.  The unscrupulous cleverness of Britain is one of Germany’s main themes.

These are minor samples of Mr. Shaw’s caprices.  In discussing the origin of the war Mr. Shaw’s aim is to prove that all the great powers are equally to blame.  He goes far back and accuses Great Britain of producing the first page of Bernhardian literature in the anonymous pamphlet “The Battle of Dorking.”  He admits in another passage that the note of this pamphlet was mainly defensive.  He is constantly thus making intrenchments for himself in case of forced retirement, and there is in his article almost nothing unjust against Great Britain that is not ingeniously contradicted or mitigated elsewhere.

Great Britain’s War Literature.

Beginning with “The Battle of Dorking” and ending with H.G.  Well’s “War in the Air,” one of the most disturbing and effective warnings against militarism ever written, he sees simply that Great Britain has produced threatening and provocative militarist literature comparable to Germany’s.  No grounds exist for such a contention.  There are militarists in all countries, but there are infinitely more in Germany than in any other country.  The fact is notorious.  The fact is also notorious that the most powerful, not the most numerous, party in Germany wanted the war.  It would be as futile to try to prove that Ireland did not want home rule as that Germany did not want war.  As for a war literature, bibliographical statistics show, I believe, that in the last ten years Germany has published seven thousand books or pamphlets about war.  No one but a German or a Shaw, in a particularly mischievous mood, would seek to show that Great Britain is responsible for the war fever.  It simply is not so.