er. His real importance was
that he was very nearly an Anarchist. The indefinable greatness there is
about him after all, in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations,
is in a certain consistency and completeness from his own point of
view. There is something mediaeval, and therefore manful, about writing a
book about everything in the world. Now this simplicity expressed itself
in politics in carrying the Victorian worship of liberty to the most
ridiculous lengths; almost to the length of voluntary taxes and
voluntary insurance against murder. He tried, in short, to solve the
problem of the State by eliminating the State from it. He was resisted
in this by the powerful good sense of Huxley; but his books became
sacred books for a rising generation of rather bewildered rebels, who
thought we might perhaps get out of the mess if everybody did as he
liked.

Thus the Anarchists and Socialists fought a battle over the death-bed of
Victorian Industrialism; in which the Socialists (that is, those who
stood for increasing instead of diminishing the power of Government) won
a complete victory and have almost exterminated their enemy. The
Anarchist one meets here and there nowadays is a sad sight; he is
disappointed with the future, as well as with the past.

This victory of the Socialists was largely a literary victory; because
it was effected and popularised not only by a wit, but by a sincere wit;
and one who had the same sort of militant lucidity that Huxley had shown
in the last generation and Voltaire in the last century. A young Irish
journalist, impatient of the impoverished Protestantism and Liberalism
to which he had been bred, came out as the champion of Socialism not as
a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of common sense. The primary
position of Bernard Shaw towards the Victorian Age may be roughly
summarised thus: the typical Victorian said coolly: "Our system may not
be a perfect system, but it works." Bernard Shaw replied, even more
coolly: "It may be a perfect system, for all I know or care. But it does
not work." He and a society called the Fabians, which once exercised
considerable influence, followed this shrewd and sound strategic hint
to avoid mere emotional attack on the cruelty of Capitalism; and to
concentrate on its clumsiness, its ludicrous incapacity to do its own
work. This campaign succeeded, in the sense that while (in the educated
world) it was the Socialist who looked the fool at the begi