The climax of this world tour in March 1933 was Shaw's first visit to North America .sx " I can't face America , " he had admitted early in the century when invited to go lecturing there .sx These invitations , sugared with huge financial enticements , would come in " at the rate of 60 per minute all the time " and every year the newspapers reported that he was finally on his way .sx But " I am as far as ever from seriously contemplating it " , he wrote when refusing another offer in 1921 .sx " If I go to America , I think I shall speak in the open air for nothing , if the police will allow me .sx " .sx His facetious refusals , attributed to fear of being made President or of the effect of his fatal good looks on American women , masked a real and complicated fear .sx He was in some ways a natural American ( " I'm like New York .sx It's hell and damnation for me to be doing nothing " ) who carried on a life-long quarrel with the United States very much in the manner of Charles Dickens .sx He would remind Archibald Henderson that , after the publication of Martin Chuzzlewit , Dickens " never retracted a syllable of Scadder ( the realtor ) , Chollop , Mrs Horning and Jefferson Brick , all of whom are the mildest of pleasantries compared to the latest realtors , gangsters and highbrows .sx The truth of the matter is that writers like Dickens are privileged to tell the truth without malice or partiality .sx " .sx Like Dickens , Shaw seems to have believed that for historical reasons there was a natural antipathy between the English and Americans and that , since some of the causes for Anglo-American dislike were not of a fundamental nature , it was better to carry on abusing one another than simulate an affection that was not felt .sx " This pretence of being affectionate cousins is pure poison , " he wrote .sx " .sx ..Better , where there is volcanic activity under the lid to lift the lid once in a while than sit on it until it blows off !sx " He had made a speciality of baiting the hundred per cent American as a ninety-nine per cent idiot .sx " I do not want to see the Statue of Liberty , " he said .sx " .sx ..I am a master of comic irony .sx But even my appetite for irony does not go as far as that !sx " .sx Many of the Americans in his plays appear to represent a nation that is riven with money-materialism .sx There are the two women in The Devil's Disciple , Judith Anderson , who is " petted into an opinion of herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which serves her instead of strength " , and the exceedingly disagreeable mother of Dick Dudgeon whose face is " grimly entrenched by the channels into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride " ; there is the vituperating lynch mob that fills the court during The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet ; and there are the Americans who turn up in Europe , such as the baffled-looking , bullet-cheeked millionaire Hector Malone Senior " whose social position needs constant and scrupulous affirmation " in Man and Superman , and the blandly effusive Ambassador Vanhatten who strides onto the terrace of the Royal Palace in the second act of The Apple Cart " like a man assured of an enthusiastic welcome " and vigorously shakes the Queen up and down with his prolonged handshake .sx In his twenties , when the Land of the Free had seemed a natural fatherland for him , Shaw had momentarily thought of emigrating there .sx " I could have come when I was young and beautiful , " he wrote when in his sixties he turned down an invitation from the New York chapter of the Drama League of America .sx " I could have come when I was mature and capable .sx " But in his seventies , " I cannot help asking myself whether it is not now too late " .sx He almost denied that he would be landing at all - he was merely looking in and out again .sx The Empress of Britain " is calling at Los Angeles for five minutes , and then calling at New York for five minutes " , he told reporters .sx " That is not my fault .sx I may meet a few friends .sx .. " .sx He had kept on friendly terms with a surprising number of native and adopted Americans - actors , anarchists , politicians , publishers .sx There was his special 'lunatic' friend Lawrence Langner and the directors , designers and performers of the Theatre Guild of New York ; writers , too , such as the pro-Soviet novelist Upton Sinclair and the pro-German poet George Sylvester Viereck , as well as his continuous biographer Archibald Henderson ; and a generous lobby of correspondents including Henry Neil , a Chicago judge , who regularly published Shaw's answers to his unusual queries ( What would he do if he were a woman ?sx What difference would being hatched in an incubator have made to his life ?sx ) until , his excitement rising in this year of Shaw's arrival , he was confined to a mental institute .sx " That is the worst of you Americans , " Shaw had complained to the theatrical producer George Tyler :sx " you are uncommonly nice people personally ; but you have not notion of practical affairs .sx " .sx Americans had been impractical over many years of Shaw's own affairs .sx They had pirated his early books and called him an 'Irish Smut Dealer' when issuing arrest warrants for disorderly conduct to the entire cast of his 'illuminated gangrene' Mrs Warren's Profession after its opening performance in New York .sx They had also removed Man and Superman and other volumes from the shelves of the New York Public Library ; and actually imprisoned a man in Detroit for reading An Unsocial Socialist in a streetcar .sx " Personally I do not take the matter so lightly , " Shaw had written to the New York Times when asked for his reaction to the withdrawal of his books from the state's libraries .sx " American civilization is enormously interesting and important to me , if only as a colossal social experiment , and I shall make no pretence of treating a public and official insult from the American people with indifference .sx " .sx The resentment he felt at having his moral authority impugned , income cut , and early illusions extinguished sharpened his criticisms and gave them a vindictive edge .sx He could hardly dig up insults enough to pile upon the childishness of Americans " which enables them to remain simple New England villagers in the complicated hustle of New York and Chicago , never revising their ideas , never enlarging their consciousness , never losing their interest in the ideals of the Pilgrim Fathers " .sx Shaw argued that the anarchical plan of letting everyone mind his own business and do the best he could for himself was only practicable in a country newly-cleared and settled by ambitious colonists without any common industrial tradition or body of custom .sx North America had been incapable of developing beyond this village stage .sx " Every social development , however beneficial and inevitable from the public point of view , is met , not by an intelligent adaptation of the social structure to its novelties , " he wrote , " but by a panic and a cry of Go Back .sx " .sx Before the Soviet Revolution Shaw had accepted that American politics had to be co-ordinated with the collective interest of civilization round the world .sx He took issue with revolutionaries who threatened the United States with the breakdown of capitalism for want of markets and who prophesied that socialism would build on its ruins .sx He preferred a more inviting evolutionary scenario .sx " Socialism is only possible in the consummation of successful Capitalism , " he wrote , " .sx .. only possible where Individualism is developed to the point at which the individual can see beyond himself and works to perfect his city and his nation instead of to furnish his own house better than his neighbor's .sx " .sx Shaw's gestures of political diplomacy confusingly punctuated the joyous stream of his Dickensian invective , and once the only European power bigger than the United States had been transformed into a federation of communist republics , he gave up these diplomatic contortions with relief .sx " I am not an American , " he admitted , " but I am the next worst thing - an Irishman .sx " His tirades against Americans were partly self-inflicted criticisms - an involuntary response to the damage he sometimes felt he had done himself by manufacturing an ostentatious G.B.S. , designed to travel in a world increasingly governed by the culture of the USA .sx " For what has been happening during my lifetime , " he had written in 1912 , " is the Americanization of the whole world .sx " He struck back as one in danger of being classed an enemy of the whole world .sx After his return from the Soviet Union he had used a special broadcast from Savoy Hill to give 'A little Talk on America' , heaping up his abuse to giddier , more ecstatic heights .sx The event was recorded by Movietone with G.B.S. at his most child-devilish encircled by immense lights like furnaces welcoming Americans to hell .sx " Hello , America !sx Hello , all my friends in America !sx Hello , all you dear old boobs who have been telling one another for a month past that I have gone dotty about Russia .sx .. " .sx Even Charlotte had to laugh .sx " I wish you could have heard G.B.S. broadcast to America about Russia , " she wrote to Nancy Astor .sx " My dear !sx All the insult he sent over !sx Too bad - but so funny .sx " .sx Yet it was not all so funny .sx Lifting the lid on the volcanic activity within himself , he covered this " most awful country " with the ashes of colossal contempt .sx Sometimes in the past he had singled out the coast-to-coast desire for money as the most encouraging social aspect of American life .sx But since the accepted method of acquiring this money in the United States was theft , he liked to add , the country had grown rich only in paper dollars that were no protection against a real financial crash .sx He comes near to crowing over the predicament of President Hoover " who became famous by feeding the starving millions of war devastated Europe , [but] cannot feed his own people in time of peace " , and castigates American " business incompetence , political helplessness and financial insolvency " with an animosity that defies any listener to dismiss what he is saying as a Shavian joke .sx " That is what makes you so popular all over the world , " he persisted , moving into rare sarcasm :sx " you make yourself at home everywhere ; and you always have the first word .sx " Shaw wanted the last word .sx With his long-range artillery he aimed to smash the glitter of Western plutocracy and laugh the American in Europe out of countenance .sx " You cannot persuade an American that he can fail to talk you into doing something foolish , " he wrote to St John Ervine .sx On the other hand you might arm an infatuated British public against surrendering to such foolishness .sx When he lets off his word-fire at the United States he often has a Britain of the future in his sights .sx He was happiest at long range and somewhat uneasy at the prospect of having to divide and subdivide his attitude after he came ashore and began mixing with these " uncommonly nice people personally " .sx His few preliminary exercises in tact - " Americans are conceited enough to believe they are the only fools in the world " - show his diplomatic skills to have been somewhat rusted .sx Equally ineffective was his pretence that Americans loved his wisecracks ( " they just adore me " ) and that he was following the example of Dickens in rousing their devotion by holding them up to ridicule as " windbags , swindlers and assassins " .sx In fact it took Dickens quarter sic !sx of a century to atone for his American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit ; and , as the actor Maurice Colbourne noted , America was also " long sensitive to the Shavian sting " .sx " Indeed no , " Shaw had replied when asked in Honolulu whether he was still a socialist .sx " I'm a communist .sx And tell that to your government .sx " Free love and anarchism had given way after the war to alcohol and communism as the most dreaded social perils in the United States , enabling G.B.S. to use his awkward status as a prim , teetotal red communist to challenge American orthodoxy .sx He looked forward to obliging the immigration authorities with answers of the utmost frankness and representing himself throughout this country of immigrants as a dangerous alien .sx