Mr. Bernard Shaw in Russia Russia would appear to be
enjoying Mr. Bernard Shaw as much as Mr. Bernard Shaw is enjoying Russia. That is not surprising, for Mr. Shaw is saying of Communists and Communism all that in their most expansive moments Communists have ever said of themselves, and more, in all likelihood, than they have ever quite believed. All that must tend to make the visit of Mr. Shaw and his discreetly selected companions, Lord and Lady Astor and Lord Lothian, very agreeable. But Mr. Shaw has a role to play whether he likes it or not. He will inevitably be regarded in Moscow, even in his more epigrammatic moments, as an interpreter of Great Britain to Russia and he will be in wide request on his return as an interpreter of Russia to Great Britain. It is too much to hope that the average Englishman should find in the coruscations that have so delighted Mr. Shaw's Russian listeners any very authentic picture of the England that the average Englishman knows, nor does that greatly matter. But it does matter whether Mr. Shaw comes back simply to tell London light-heartedly, as he told Moscow, that England ought to have started the Soviet experiment first, or whether he sets himself seriously to illuminate what he regards as the strength and weaknesses of the Soviet system as they have revealed themselves to his penetrating insight. We shall hope for the best until we know the worst.
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