Shaw belonged to a group of very-early-twentieth century second tier geniuses: Chesteron, Belloc, Kipling. Their lives had been so sheltered for so long that they played with political fire, not realizing that it was hot. Their common thread was contempt for, and boredom with, parliamentary government.
Of course, World War I encouraged them in their bad tendencies, for the opposite reason–everyone had been fried, and wanted to change the nature of everything even more desperately.
How does it all fit together? Maybe chaos and strife were incomprehensible–not enough of it, then way too much. Kipling, often the most vulgarly brutal of the lot, may actually have been the most realistic, having spent so much time in India. Kipling wrote a set of epitaphs for fictional victims of World War I which are grave and wise–at the level of “Recessional,” or the Greek Anthology.