A CLOSE-UP OF
odre
the year
THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 30, 1937.
OUR NEW 3500240 Amaz
1890 a young man of
E the bone had a big idea
It concerned a great, rank, tough- looking plant about twenty feet high.
He was interested in it and he talked to his father about it. Some- times he e called it the Sisal Plant. Then
PRIME
MINISTER
Just
he referred to it as Henequen. fashioned
of the
lean dry face, an old- one
moustache,
thin biggest jobs llar, on earth. And there were yet other times scrawny neck, an amazing - when he rather grandly referred to a first-class brain and a character that has helped to make the name it as Agave Rigida but it was all
Chamberlain the most famous in the same plant's nude spat
politics for the last hundred years.
He told his father that from Sisal came a clean, tough, white fibre, and from the fibre came hemp- "And hemp, sir, well money!"
The old man listened.
marketed is
BY
AUGUSTINE LIVESEY
DEN
lain:
He has his father's grasp of business, but he is not a poli- tician. He will NOT
a politician. To all political over- tures he has replied, a business
man.
but he can sit the clock
round hard at it
still finish fresh.
He
and
reversed Eng-
land's ancient policy of
Free, Trade; and i he
cans
overe
Years ago it
1923 about —they called Chamberlain,
disciple they c
called Chamberlain a disciple of the "Be Kind to Germany Policy," but I doubt whether any of that affection still lingers, and those who
Chamberlain was the first man to believe in Britain and Germany take a firm line with the delirious marching hand in hand
osg * propositions put forward by war-
Neville will almost certainly be a Europe will have difficulty success.
making him a big supporter.
He's tough this man. of! He rises early. He goes to bed
He's old, yes sixty-nine
Hemp from Sisal was rather a new thing in the nineties, and he
He has been Postmaster-General, was anxious to get the boy started Paymaster-General, Minister on something.
The lad seemed enthusiastic. Furthermore, his plan appeared
to him to be sound. It seemed
T-
Health and Chancellor of the Ex- late. chequer a good background for
that Sisal grew in Central America, THE but had lately begun to be. cultivated in the West Indies.
The Bahamas promised to yield likely crops and there was every chance of doing business if you
were a sI
smart grower.
The son got capital from the father and it was not long before he sailed away from England to the warm sunny Bahamas.
somehow th
things went wrong.
His crops failed.
Frost and plant disease attacked them.
to
A
WORLD GOES BY By "ULYSSES"
years,
DDRESSING the youth of Em-So Roderick, abandond, his suiside pire, Mr. Baldwin again call-and went out for a glass of tonic. ed for "more poets," as he did at Cambridge some months ago; which
"Pennies from Hevven," he mur- old-and call has already moved Miss Laura merd; as he sipped his
Battalion
2 stood up to the Ameri-
the debt question with a calm determination that infuriated the money moguls of Wall Street
time creditors. He brought reason to those who were translating blood and death into terms of dollars and
pounds sterling.
His personality is not attractive. His rather high-pitched voice is unfriendly
It is possible that he has a sense of humour, but it is not very parent. When he tells a joke you can see the point lumbering along when it's far away right on the horizon.
He is not a very human man. You don't think of him as father or a husband,
You think of him as an official tax gatherer a godsend for car- toonists who need", a gloomy...“ un-
ending cha cter.
His toothy smile is rather wan. His clothes dull and drab,
But there is another side to him. friends and He startled his enemies alike, when one day last summer he sat down and wrote a little article for the Press on black- birds.
It came as a bit of shock to know that the ablest Finance Minis-
For seven years he was there, but Riding to observe rather bitterly mild. "I could knock up a good
that in the Army Demobilisation story outs this!" Order of Precedence, 1918, poets
Alas! came in Group 41, last of all, “along } ›
is tipewriter was in pawn with parrot-breeders, silhouette-cut-and, ‹ most jernalists, Roderick was unabel to write ledgibly,is go Competition was unexpectedly ters, and such.”
there was little hope of getting fierce and his c customers cast doubt ---_____
artikle acksepted. The poet Edmund Blunden once such on the quality of his hemp. He stuck to his job with fierce energy got a temporary job at but in the end he was beaten.
H. Qon the strength of a review idea struck him, and he went ter in Europe should also be an
Litt.round to the pawnshop.
ornithologist, with a rather fanciful Arthur Neville Chamberlain was of his verse in the Times whacked.
Supp, but the tidal wave of for-
way of describing how a blackbird “Lissen,” he said to old Amos, in the garden of Number 11, He returned Birmingham, tune soon receded.
the pawnbroker, “I've got a very Downing-street, imitates a thrush. where the family business was.c
His parents received him home The poet-Siegfried Sassoon, with urjent artikle to write will you again gladly. He was finished all the social advantages of a huntlet me tipe it out on my machine?" with the Sisal Plant, but there were ing man never reached Brigade,
Amos thought this was rather Then, of course, there's fishing. plenty of good opportunities in his and at least one other of the Muses' home town. -
favourite sons, whose name we for- unusuels but at lenth he agreed. He Like many other good. Brumma He did well very well...
get, got packdrill and fatigue in sent: Roderick upstairs to the store gem folk he likes his rod and line. He became head of a big marine 1914 for answering "Poet" when room and gave him his tipewriter: Andasko a good "fisherman: ke firm, Hoskins and Sons. He the sergeant-major demanded his Before going back to the shop he naturally has no sense of propor- achieved the chairmanship of civil occupation." ("I'll learn you ast his daughter Arabella to keep a tion on the subject. ↑ Helse Elliots Metal Company and joined where you are, me lad. .!") eye on Roddy, in case he pocketed addict: With great solemnity: he the board of the Birmingham SmallTM
[any of the other pledges Arma Company.
People began to talk about him. They made him Lord Mayor In 1916 the newspapers printed this about him:
It may be fairly said, summing everything up, that despite Mr She kept her eye on him and Baldwin's curious obsession, Eng-thought he was rather a nice boy, land is a commonsense ·* country Soon they were chatting together where poets are not encouraged to and he was telling her the Story of "He has his father's grasp of act, the goat. The only wealthy His Life. business, but he is not a politician. one we know is in the publicity He will not be a politician. He business, where Imagination has could have had a safe seat at West such scope. Birmingham had he cared for its To all overtures he has replied: “I am a business man.
To-day the business man who dis- liked hemp and politics is to become Prime Minister of England your boss and my boss.
* A strange man. But a good one, Cold, clear and correct, with none of the stage artifices that appeal to the mob.undsso
No friendly pipe.
Pennies From Heaven
No, Roddy's artikle was nevver nevver even
pubblished: It was ve
finnished. For the rest of the after- noon he sat with Arabella, hedds; close together, swopping dandruff,
One uppont a time there was la free-lance jernalist named Roderick To-day Roddy is a partner in the arried to penny, pawnbroking:3) who, redused to his last
is the promtly put it in the gas meter, and Arabella, and
erah feet to inserted his hedd in the gas oven. pa
At that moment the man from the
No eloquent blah spoken in soft Gas Co. - arrived
sh-ace
smart rep
metre He did so... derick five-and-s
be
empty the Which just shows you Marmaduke? ning to Ro perado.
disscount.World's Press News.”
2
has announced that: “Fishingṇzer- ercises mind, ingenuity and skill,"
He made no mention that fishing sometimes catches fis
Every year he goes to Scotland inevitable for the pilgrimage to Mecca that provides good, photographs for the society magazines.na
When there are no more fish, In he rivers you'll find Neville: still angling on the bank, with – blazing
natical eyes
Well, hes the big boss from now.
A strange man, perhaps, A shade too farkstoos ort Hod
But I'd nooner clear headed Midland
ibly
this
any
Nil des
the rage in
the “Chancellerfes