THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM [Illustration] THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM BY BERNARD SHAW [Illustration] BRENTANO’S PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 1928 COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY BRENTANO’S INC. _First printing, June, 1928_ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MY SISTER-IN-LAW MARY STEWART CHOLMONDELY THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN TO WHOSE QUESTION THIS BOOK IS THE BEST ANSWER I CAN MAKE A FOREWORD FOR AMERICAN READERS I have never been in America; therefore I am free from the delusion, commonly entertained by the people who happen to have been born there, that they know all about it, and that America is their country in the same sense that Ireland is my country by birth, and England my country by adoption and conquest. You, dear madam, are an American in the sense that I am a European, except that the American States have a language in common and are federated, and the European states are still on the tower of Babel and are separated by tariff fortifications. When I hear people asking why America does not join the League of Nations I have to point out to them that America _is_ a League of Nations, and sealed the covenant of her solidity as such by her blood more than sixty years ago, whereas the affair at Geneva is not a League of Nations at all, but only a so far unsuccessful attempt to coax Europe to form one at the suggestion of a late American President, with the result that the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs makes occasional trips to Geneva, and, on returning, reassures the British House of Commons by declaring that in spite of all Woodrow-Wilsonic temptations to combine with other nations he remains an Englishman first, last, and all the time; that the British Empire comes before everything with him; and that it is on this understanding and this alone that he consents to discuss with foreigners any little matters in which he can oblige them without detriment to the said reserved interests. And this attitude seems to us in England so natural, so obvious, so completely a matter of course, that the newspapers discuss the details of Mr Chamberlain’s report of his trip without a word about the patriotic exordium which reduces England’s membership of the League to absurdity.