This state of entire non-understanding (as distinct from misunderstanding) of the Welsh seems to me just now to be not only unique, but important and rather serious. For, unless I am very much mistaken, Wales is going to play some peculiar, and perhaps dominant, part in the developments of our extraordinary time. If the Welsh begin to influence us without our having yet even begun to imagine them, we shall have the whole Irish business over again; the gradual or imperfect understanding of a thing in the process of wrestling with it in the dark. The indications of such a movement in Wales (wherever it is), the suggestion of the growing influence of Welshmen (whoever they may be), is something that comes to us rather by widely distributed happenings and hints than in any theatrical example. Some, however, would call Mr. Lloyd George a theatrical example; he has been called even more extraordinary things. And in that degree the thing is true. Mr. Lloyd George is very much more genuine and sincere and formidable in his capacity as leader of the little Welsh nation than he is in any of the other capacities in which he is foolishly praised and ridiculously reviled. But to anyone who really has an eye for history in action, the smallest strike secretary in a Welsh railway or colliery bulks much bigger in the present picture than Mr. Lloyd George. And it has been in Wales that many of the most dramatic and effective labour revolts have happened: above all it was in Wales that they presented peculiar features of their own, bad or good, which marked them out from the whole temper and habit of England in recent times. The modern theory of animals was challenged in the episode of the ponies in the mines. The modern theory of Jews was challenged in the violent Anti-Semite riots of the last few weeks. Things fierce and unfamiliar, things lost since the Middle Ages, are coming upon us out of the West.
As the curious incident of the quarrels between Welshmen and Jews has been mentioned, I will take the opportunity here of correcting a curious mistake that clings to the minds of numbers of my correspondents. There is in particular a gloomy gentleman in America who keeps on asking me how my Anti-Semite prejudice is getting on, and generally displaying a curiosity about how many Hebrew teeth I have pulled out this week, and how often a Pogrom is held in front of my house. He appears to base it all on some statement of mine that Jews were tyrants and traitors. Upon this basis his indignation is eloquent, lengthy and (in my opinion) just. The only weakness affecting this superstructure is the curious detail that I never did say that Jews were tyrants and traitors. I said that a particular kind of Jew tended to be a tyrant and another particular kind of Jew tended to be a traitor. I say it again. Patent facts of this kind are permitted in the criticism of every other nation on the planet: it is not counted illiberal to say that a certain kind of Frenchman tends to be sensual. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the Parisian tradition of life and letters has a marked element of sensuality. It is also as plain as a pikestaff that those who are creditors will always have a temptation to be tyrants, and that those who are cosmopolitans will always have a temptation to be spies. This has nothing to do with alleging that the majority of any people falls into its typical temptations. In this respect I should imagine that Jews varied in their moral proportions as much as the rest of mankind. Rehoboam was a tyrant; Jehoshaphat was not. In what is perhaps the most celebrated collection of Jews in human history, the proportion of traitors was one in twelve. But I cannot see why the tyrants should not be called tyrants and the traitors traitors; why Rehoboam should not cause a rebellion or Judas become an object of dislike, merely because they happen to be members of a race persecuted for other reasons and on other occasions. Those are my views on Jews. They are more reasonable than those of the people that wreck their shops; and much more reasonable than those of the people who justify them on all occasions.
“Ego et Shavius Meus”
Accident has cut me off this week from many current publications; and left me much to my own devices. It is therefore my immutable purpose to write an article about myself, under the thin pretence of noticing a book about Mr. Bernard Shaw.
This is all the more fun because it is exactly what Mr. Bernard Shaw would do himself; nor should I blame him. I like Mr. Shaw’s type of Egoism; because, if he talks big, it is at least about big things; things bound to be bigger than himself.
I revolt, not against the loud egoist, but the gentle egoist; who talks tenderly of trifles; who says, “A sunbeam gilds the amber of my cigarette-holder; I find I cannot live without a cigarette-holder.” I resist this arrogance simply because it is more arrogant. For even so complete a fool cannot really suppose we are interested in his cigarette-holder; and therefore must suppose that we are interested in him. But I defend a dogmatic egoist precisely because he deals in dogmas.
The Apostles’ Creed is not regarded as a pose of foppish vanity; yet the word “I” comes before even the word “God.” The believer comes first; but he is soon dwarfed by his beliefs, swallowed in the creative whirlwind and the trumpets of the resurrection. And if a man says he believes in the Superman or the Socialist State, I think him equally modest; only not so sensible.
Mr. Herbert Skimpole’s book, Bernard Shaw: the Man and His Work, contains many suggestive and valuable things to which I cannot do justice, including allusions to myself mostly only too flattering, and in one case both amusing and mystifying. The passage suggests that all the active figures in my idle fictions are made as fat as I am; though I cannot recall that any of them are fat at all; except a semi-supernatural monster in a nightmare called The Man Who Was Thursday.