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Extraordinary Content George Bernard Shaw Manusc Extraordinary Content George Bernard Shaw Manuscrip

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:1.00 USD Estimated At:2,500.00 - 3,000.00 USD
Extraordinary Content George Bernard Shaw Manusc Extraordinary Content George Bernard Shaw Manuscrip
<B>Extraordinary Content George Bernard Shaw Manuscript During World War II Giving His Views as to Whether an effective British-American-Russian Collaboration Could be Possible After the War. He Also Comments on Whether the War is Seriously Hampering the Development of the Arts, Literature in Particular.</B></I> Shaw, George Bernard. Irish playwright, novelist, and critic. Typed Manuscript Signed "G. Bernard Shaw," with autograph manuscript corrections, 1 page 4to, Ayot St. Lawrence, July 24, 1941 to Russell Landstrom, a reporter for the associated Press. Shaw's letter is written on the back of a letter to him from Landstrom asking Shaw two questions, the answers to which were to be the basis for a "birthday anniversary story." Shaw was about to turn 85. Landstrom asked Shaw if he thought <I>"British-American-Russian collaboration could be possibly effective after the war?"</B></I> and <I>"Do you think the war is seriously hampering the development of the arts, particularly literature?"</B></I> Shaw has replied: <I>"The victory cannot now be a British victory: it will be a joint affair of Britain, the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. And as Russia is now in the front line, and likely to be the decisive factor, the peace terms will not be so simple as they were at Versailles, where, although America had finished the job, France and Britain were not prevented by President Wilson for going all out for the disablement of Germany under cover of a League of Nations which was carefully reduced to impotence beforehand by giving every power represented on it a veto. Wilson could do nothing because America was not at his back; and the U. S. S. R. having paid the piper, will call the tune with a weight that Wilson could not bring to bear. And as the U. S. A. form a plutocratic republic, and Britain is an equally plutocratic constitutional monarchy, there will be a clash between plutocracy and socialism. Stalin will have the advantage of thoroughly understanding the position, whereas the plutocracies talk about Socialism and Communism and liberty and democracy without knowing what they are talking about, just following the slot of money and power as a hound follows the slot of a fox. That will be the situation. I can say nothing about its upshot, as I am not a prophet or even a tipster. As to the second question, war hampers everything except the application of science to the arts of slaughter and destruction. But in doing so it produces results that are entirely unexpected and unintended. in the Four years War it overthrew four apparently everlasting empires; and the present war has thrown plutocratic England and America into the arms of of communist Russia. Not quite what the warmakers intended, is it?"</B></I> Fine condition and an important manuscript.