The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-10-02

worthy your woman" says she.
 Inexorable as the law behind the force is the will which dominates both. Yet so baffling are the diff culties involving them that both seem about to lose How they finally win this daring pair makes the strongest and most pulse stirring story of the mounted that has yet come to us out of the frozen north.
 BACK TO METHUSELAH" | By Bernard shaw, George H. Doran Comapny, Publishers, New York City. \
 In charming preface to his Back to Methuselah," Bernard Shaw says:
 T am doing the best I can at my age. My powers are waning, but so 1 much the better for those who found ] me unbearably brilliant in my prime" 1 Isn't that distinctly Shavian in its wit and clarity?
 Back to Methuselan" is a sensa- 1 tional play which has been received with the greatest enthusiasm. by lay man and critic alike, the concensus l or opinion being that it is Shaw at his best, ,s, In the first act of Back to Methu- 1 SoldH ociHdIQ SHAW ludheS lnt SGT | bent say to Eve: When you and Adam talk, hear you say why?' You see things and you say 'Why?' But l dream things that never were, and I say, Why not%" This thought l is Shaw's own attitude in the book. He has dreamed of things that may l be. beginning far back in the days ! of the Garden or Eden, and reaching l into far-distant future. And, bril- i liantly. startlngly impudently. as only Shaw can do it. he says Why not ?"s,
 Haywood Broun, master critic. 1 says of Shaw's Back to Methu selah." and. by the way, one of the best criti- cisms yet made of the book:
 l Back to Methuselah" ought to set tie once and for all the silly old l myth that Bernard Shaw is clown who believes in nothing and will ad- vocate anything for the sake of a i laugh. He fences of course but he ' keeps his point aimed at the vitals. | In earlier plays, "Androcles and the Lion. for instance, and more par ticularly The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet" Shaw has given some out
 line of his religious views but never l before has he expressed himself so fully and frankly upon the subject and with such feeling. Mir Shaw wor- ships in the same church with H. G Wells. and they both preach there. < Back to Methuselah" reveals Shaw in the act of hitting the sawdus, trail However, he does not pause at the mourners' bench. but leap, boldly into tho pulpit. He has not re- pented of his old cocksureness. "Thus the educated man Is a greater nuis- ance than the uueducated one' he cries at one point of hi. discourse. and continues Indeed it is the ifefficiency and sham of the educational side of our schools etc which. except under compulsion, chil. dren would not be sent by thel, parents at all if they did not act a. prisons in which the imma lures are Kept from worrying the mature) tha- save us from being dashed on, tht rocks of false doctrine instead ot drifting down the midstream of mere ignorance. There is no way out through the schoolmaster."
 But in addition to this familiar strain, we think we detect new note of authentic wistfulness 1T Shaw. He explains first that h, wrote Man and Superman" as a pro
 test against the conception of mechanistic universe which came witt the theory of circumstantial selectio established by the followers of Dar. win. Shaw is disciple of Creativ, Evolrtion. He must find force ant Y plan in the world Atheism he re jects as much too disorderly He ex . plains however. that in a measur, Man and Superman" did not serv. the purpose for which 1t was fash toned. But being then at the neigh of my invention and comedic talen. , r decorated it too brilliantly ant lavishly. =. The effect was 2, vertiginous apparently, that nobod, noticed the new religion in the cen
 ter of the intellectual whirlpool" ! It may be objected that 1t is ! curiously aggressive wistfulness, bu though Shaw is partly in jest whel he speaks of the waning of hi
 powers and his sands running out : a little of the notion remains a something not altogether mere play } fulness. As for the fundamental in intent of the preface to Back {, !. Methuslah" there can be no question that 1t Is earnest. and deadly earnest } It also seems to us one of the wise ( and most passionate pieces of theo , logical writing in our language