This week have occurred two notable birthdays. We have written
elsewhere of Mr. Bernard Shaw, who is seventy. As a dramatist he will have enduring fame. His greatest value in the passing moment is as a gadfly, for his sharp wits have an astonishing stimulus for others. We also realize, only in part with gratitude, - that it is Mr. Shaw, the extreme individualist by nature, who put life into the Fabian Society, which without him might well have died an early death from dullness. The other birthday is Lord Balfour's seventy-eighth. If those who have lately heard him in debate or seen him on a lawn-tennis court flatly deny him that age, we cannot help it. We wish that the public could realize what assets we have in his half-century of public work and all the experience still at our service, in the brain of a philosopher turned to practical statesmanship. Probably those who understand best what we mean are those who saw him at Washington in 1917 and realized then at least Lord Balfour's distinction among his fellow-men. We offer to both our good wishes for their continued youth.
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