If I could have found a book by Bernard Shaw in which Mr. Shaw had merely said what he wanted himself, it is quite possible this book would not have been written. Even if Mr. Shaw, without saying what he wanted, had ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wanting something in this world amounted to anything, or could make any one else want it, or could make any difference in him, or in the world around him, perhaps I would not have written this book. Everywhere, as I have looked about me among the bookmen in America, in England, I have found, not the things that they wanted in their books, but always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories--these prairies of things that they did not want. Now, as a matter of fact, I knew already, with an almost despairing distinctness, nearly all these things I did not want and it has not helped me (with all due courtesy and admiration) having John Galsworthy out photographing them day after day, so that I merely did not want them harder. And Mr. Wells's measles and children's diseases, too. I knew already that I did not want them. And Mr. Shaw's entire, heroic, almost noble collection of things he does not want does not supply me--nor could it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with--even if it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind and people in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives within his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of them, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard Shaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that George Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all around him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and think--looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my hearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain human being, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound to say I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or in Mr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for. And Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves of sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts, has presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even if it all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have things without wanting them, and without wanting anything. * * * * *