Mr. Shaw’s comments throws a strong light on the spirit of British society.  It is true that he intimates that he ran the risk of “prompt lynching” at one time, but that was probably the suggestion of a certain timidity and vanity to which he pleads guilty.  His safe and prosperous existence is really a striking evidence, on the one hand, of British good nature, and, on the other, of the indifferent estimate the British put on his influence.

Like Iago, Mr. Shaw is nothing if not critical, and in this crisis his criticism is for the most part bitter, extreme, and in purpose destructive.  He particularly dislikes Sir Edward Grey and the Government of which he is a leading spirit, and the class which the Government represents.  He singles out Sir Edward as the chief “Junker” and among the chief “militarists” who brought about this war.  Mr. Shaw’s attacks on the Foreign Secretary are savage, and, as often happens with savage attacks—­they are far from consistent.  For example, Mr. Shaw paraphrases at some length the interview between Sir Edward and the German Ambassador, in which the latter made four different propositions to secure the neutrality of Great Britain if Germany waged war on France, all of which Sir Edward refused.  Mr. Shaw sees in this only evidence of determination to take arms against Germany in any case, carrying out a long-cherished plan formed by the Government of which Sir Edward Grey was, for this matter, the responsible member.  He does not see—–­ though it is so plain that a wayfaring man though a professional satirist should not err therein—­that what the Secretary intended to do—­what, in fact, he did do—­was to refuse to put a price on British perfidy, to accept any “bargain” offered to that end.

On the other hand, Mr. Shaw paraphrases at still greater length the report of the interview in which the Russian Foreign Minister and the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg tried to induce the British Government to commit itself in advance to war against Germany.  Mr. Shaw thinks that thus the German “bluff” would have been called and war would have been prevented, and he is confident that Mr. Winston Churchill would have taken the Bismarck tone and dictated the result.  He cannot see—­what is really the essential fact in both cases—­that Sir Edward Grey was striving in every honorable way to preserve peace, that his Government refused to stand idle and see France crushed in the same spirit that it refused to menace Germany until a definite and undeniable cause of war arose.

That cause came with Germany’s violation of its pledge to observe the neutrality of Belgium, and England’s response excites Mr. Shaw’s most furious contempt.  He adopts with zest the judgment of the German Chancellor.  The pledge for all who signed it was but a scrap of paper, of no more binding force than others that had gone their way to dusty death in the diplomatic waste baskets.  To observe the obligation it imposed was hypocrisy.