February 8, 2021

Finest Hour 190, Fourth Quarter 2020

Page 05

Coming in Finest Hour 191: Churchill, Race, and Religion

CHARTWELL—[2 September 1928] My dear [George] Bernard Shaw, I was delighted to receive your book [The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism] and greatly complimented by your kindness in sending me a signed copy. I have delayed thanking you only because I wished to read it first; and business pressed out leisure. I admire the simple-brutal style and treatment. I am sure it will do nothing but good to the thoughtless complacent propertied person. I am buying a copy for my son who, though not possessing any of the above qualities, is far too ready to take the existing situation and system as axiomatic.

I think I am in agreement with you in condemning not only Capitalism and Socialism, but every other conceivable immediate variant—so long as men—and intelligent women—remain what they have so long been. Everything they try will fail—owing to their deplorable characteristics and their liking for these very characteristics. The only world fit for them is a Hugger-Mugger world. Ants or Bees would be worthy of better things—tho’ even they have some bad habits. The real fault lies with the Creator; and there is no apparent way of bringing it home to him. “He just keeps rolling along.”

About this equalization of income—I was much relieved to find that there were not going to be any immediate changes. I am writing a book—of enormous value (indirect) to mankind and of very considerable value (direct) to me; and I should certainly not persist in this labour if I thought the tax collector was going to take the whole instead of 2/5ths of its yield.

Let me once again tell you how very much honoured I am to have received this great courtesy at your hands, and how highly I shall prize its embodiment, and with all good wishes to you and your wife, believe me. Yours very sincerely— Winston S. Churchill.

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