Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/365

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April 14, 1915

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

295

"Jest 'op 'up that ladder, Jim, and see if she's safe."

"Not me, when I can go to the Front an' git all the risks I want—wiv glory!"

THE SUFFERINGS OF SHAW.

[According to the author of a new book on Socrates, Mr. Bernard Shaw, like the Athenian philosopher, is an intellectualist whose "crime is ideas" and whose "profoundly moral aim" is misunderstood by the British bourgeoisie.]

How strange it is that modern scribes, obsessed
By slight and superficial similarities,
Should damnify our goodliest and best
By disregarding radical disparities;
Till, waxing wanton in their futile quest
Of parallels to obsolete barbarities,
They add the final and back-breaking straw
By linking Socrates with Bernard Shaw.

Old Soc., benighted soul, had never learned
To keep the soldier on his proper plane,
As one who in all history has earned
The meed of intellectual disdain;
Nay worse, himself with martial zeal had burned
And served the State in many a hard campaign,
Content at Athens' call to shed his blood
Instead of pelting her with well-aimed mud.

His nose was snub, his features blunt and rough,
His figure was uncouth, his legs were bandy;
He was not fit to photo in the buff—
The latest foible of the super-dandy;
He did not dress in hygienic stuff
Or live on cocoa, beans and sugar candy;
He never owned a car, and when it froze
Walked cheerfully upon his ten bare toes.

He never wrote a novel or a play,
Though other playwrights pitilessly guyed him;
He never boomed himself, but lives to-day
Because a certain Plato glorified him
(As Bacon in his self-effacing way
Allowed a pushing mime to override him);
But all the time the actual Simon Pure
Was commonplace, illiterate and obscure.

He taught philosophy, but took no fees;
He wrote no tracts in praise of hostile nations;
Abstemious as a rule, he could with ease
Compete in the amount of his potations
With gilded rakes like Alcibiades
And other partners of his dissipations—
Men of a stamp whom simple, hightoned Fabians
Would rank with Bantus or with Bessarabians.

Then Socrates was tried upon a charge
Of teaching youths in wickedness to wallow,
And hustled hurriedly on Charon's barge,
Thanks to the hemlock which they made him swallow;
While Mr. Shaw is very much at large
And wholly free his noble aims to follow,
Which, though traduced by certain sons of sin,
Are properly respected in Berlin.

But why pollute a vital modern page
With problems fit for musty antiquarians?
Why desecrate the greatest living sage
By linking him with obsolete barbarians?
Rather let us with pious zeal engage
In homage to the Prince of Vegetarians,
And thank our stars that, as the Huns have written,
One upright man remains in blighted Britain.

Mr. Lloyd George to the Shipbuilders' Deputation regarding the Drink, 29th March:—

"I was glad from that point of view, but only from that point of view, that Mr. Henderson stated quite clearly at the start that there were no teetotalors amongst you."

A distressing sequel is found in the following extract from The North Mail, 1st April:—

"When a reporter sought for a further reply from shipyard managers yesterday he found them all sitting tight."