[Autograph Manuscript, re: His Reflections on Economic and Political Matters]

[London?], [nd. but possibly ca 1914].. Two pages, closely written in pencil, with deletions and insertions, on two quarto sheets of pale blue T.H. Saunders letterstock (watermarked '1913'). Horizontal fold, with minor creases and smudges, but very good. An intriguing manuscript in which Shaw embarks on a characteristically discursive consideration of war, politics, economics and matters of civilization, with the tone of possibly having been written in response to a request for views on same: "Pardon the abruptness of the suggestion; but suppose we blow the German fleet out of the water, or under it, and the consequence is that Russia profits by our victory to the extent of carving a Baltic province out of Germany and condemning Sweden to live in the bear's mouth, will that be a result for western civilization to rejoice over? The French seem to think that because Russia has drained away from France so much of the capital that is needed at home for making French towns and French children healthier and happier, Russia is her dearest friend. That is already not good sense. Of all tests of prosperity, financial balance sheets are the most delusive. Capital rushes downhill towards backward countries and cheap labor: civilization struggles uphill toward highly cultivated countries. It is by following the flow of capital that France has fallen into that alliance with Russia which is at the root of the whole present mischief. Our own squalid adventures in Persia have led us in the same direction ... Had England, instead of wavering between fear of Germany, patronage of France, and love of dividends, used her immense make-weight to consolidate France, Germany, England into a western nucleus ... we should not have been in our present mess; and we could have taken the criminal case of Servia [sic] out of the hands of the Austrian prosecutor into an international court ... even if the three great western powers must now fall on and hammer one another to exhaustion, they will still have to stop somewhere and mend their relations as best they can with a treaty. All the bloodshed and powder burning in the world will not alter the real problem one jot; and it seems a pity that we cannot tackle it at once, acknowledging frankly that our diplomacy has reduced itself to absurdity in Armageddon, and try to solve it as 'good Europeans'."