conscience has nothing to hope from our terrors.




*"Shaw's Nonsense About Belgium"*

By Arnold Bennett.

Written for THE NEW YORK TIMES.


Mr. Bernard Shaw's "Common Sense About the War" is the talk of the town,
and it deserves to be. One of its greatest values is its courage, for in
it Shaw says many things no one else would have dared to say. It
therefore, by breaking the unearthly silence on certain aspects of the
situation, perhaps inaugurates a new and healthier period of discussion
and criticism on such subjects as recruiting, treatment of soldiers and
sailors' dependents, secret diplomacy, militarism, Junkerism, churches,
Russia, peace terms, and disarmament. It contains the most magnificent,
brilliant, and convincing common sense that could possibly be uttered.
No citizen, I think, could rise from the perusal of this tract with a
mind unilluminated or opinions unmodified. Hence everybody ought to read
it, though everybody will not be capable of appreciating the profoundest
parts of it.

Mixed up with the tremendous common sense, however, is a considerable
and unusual percentage of that perverseness, waywardness, and
arlequinading which are apparently an essential element of Mr. Shaw's
best work. This is a disastrous pity, having regard to the immense