George Bernard Shaw is best remembered for his ironic wit. Yet he viewed his literary works as extensions of dogged humanitarian effort and, as in his preface to Heartbreak House, expressed disappointment in a public seeking entertainment rather than instruction. Here he addresses a fellow member of London’s Fabian Society, H.G. Wells, laying out the errors of the organization’s politics with his usual sarcasm. At the time, Shaw was pushing hard for minimum wage activism, which might account for his urgency of tone.
10 Adelphi Terrace
17th February 1906
Dear H.G.W.,
On considering this confounded committee of yours at a private conference with Bland & Webb, we have come to the conclusion that the only way to fix up the business satisfactorily is to withdraw your four executive members—Charlotte, Chesterton, Headlam & Standring—and keep your committee outside the executive completely, whilst giving you the run of it by my plan of inviting you to summon any of us and get what you want out of us.
The reasons for this are obvious—or would be if you had any sense. Your position is that the executive is a stick-in-the-mud body and the secretary a duffer. Now you cant [sic] reasonably make an unrepresentative minority of the executive a party to an inquiry which has primarily to establish that fact. They would be in a ridiculous position when the executive came to consider your report. You must either make the executive a party to the inquiry by having the whole 15 on chock-a-block, which would mean a large committee tremendously dominated by the old gang, or else keep them off it altogether…When you meet, you must appoint an honorary secretary. If you want to consult Pease, you can have him up for examination; if you want me, ditto; Webb, ditto; Bland, ditto; Charlotte, ditto; &c &c &c &c &c. Thus you will have the run of the whole place without any risk of being bulldozed or outvoted by the whole gang. Finally you will make a report; and the executive will consider it and either adopt it or criticize it or make alternative proposals or deal with it in some way or other before it goes to the society. We may confer with your committee on it. Anyhow, that is the routine as we see it.
We cannot afford to quarrel with you because we want to get tracts out of you; and in any case you will see that we are not hostile, as we let you have an absolutely free run at the meeting. Your paper was full of small misapprehensions which could easily have been seized on to secure an easy debating triumph; but we felt that they really didn’t matter, whereas the general drift of the thing was to the good. But the affair, however friendly, must be in clear form. You must not go about amiably disclaiming any intention of attacking us, or trying to shape the proceedings on that assumption. You can be of no use unless you attack us and meet our defence. The society will say ‘if you are not attacking the old gang, then what the devil are you wasting our time for, and where does our fun come in?’ And on the other hand, when we treat your onslaught as an onslaught, and hold the fort against you, dont [sic] suppose that we are in a huff. It is only by placing ideas in clear opposition that any issue can be created. It is our business & yours to create an issue; and if you consider your feelings or ours in the matter you are simply unfit for public life and will be crushed like a trodden daisy.
In haste—G.B.S.
From The Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw: Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Edited by J. Percy Smith. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1995. pp. 25–27.