THE CHINA MAIL, MARCH 12, 1941
CHINA MAIL
-WINDSOR HOUSE
A NEW WAR IN THE DESERTS
Many of us have thrill- ed over T. E. Lawrence's account of the desert re- volt which in the last war drove the Turks back to Palestine and ultimate de- feat by the armies of Al- lenby. The new war being waged by the Imperial| forces and the Frer French
Abyssinia,
in
Somaliland, Eritrea and: down in Libya round they Kufra and Jarabub Oases, promises an equally ex- citing story, but it will be; different. Lawrence's was a tale of camel-borne Arab legions armed for the most; part with primitive rifles! --a few packages of dyna- mite and a very few ma- chine-guns alone meeting the need for modern wea- pons. This new saga will, be a story of machines, but it will have all the thrills.
Yates
THE NEW ARITHMETIC
Lesson Six
Sept: 1939 Sunk Afloat
Battleships 15 34 14 60 Cruiser's 6262
Aircraft 77
Carriers
Prove,
6
using the Josef Goebbels Theorem
QUOD ERROR DEMONSTRANDUM
Mud
Can't
"If there were soldiers or air- men in the middle of the Saburo
official to
And
Stop
By William Gibbons
Gharfed ADMIRALTY
Rain
'em
Page T
India's Problems
In a word, the point has now been reached at which the British Government, with the best will in the world, can take no major step in Indian politics unless Indians themselves create conditions of national unity in which it will be possible for full responsible gov- ernment Indian Home Rule if the term is preferred-to function peacefully and fruitfully,
To justify this apparently dog- matic statement it is necessary, in the first place, to go back to the beginning of the war, when Mr. Gandhi, spraking for the strongest and best organised section of In- Idian political opinion, namely, the All-India National Congress, de- manded that India be granted na- |tional “independence" as a neces- sary preliminary to her devoting all her national energies and re- SourceS to the war against Nazi
By Professor John
Coatman
aggression. Cogently, he argued that only through this develop- ment could the necessary spiritual forces and qualities be mobilised in India, und. just as important. only thus could Great Britain genuinely and without embarrass- ment stand forth in the eyes of the world as the champion “par ex- cellence" of democracy and free- doni.
Had Mr. Gandhi been speaking for all-India, and had the issue of Indian independence hung solely on the will of the British Govern- meat, his demand would, of course, have made it impossible for the latter to refuse it, except at the ruinous cost of showing that our basic claim, on which the unity and resolution of the whole British Empire depend, that we are fighting this war to ensure the survival of freedom and. even. civilisation itself, was a mere pre- tence.
But the immediate reaction to Mr. Gandhi's demand, inside India itself, showed that he was far from speaking for a united India, and, also, that there were powerful in- terests іл the country actively opposed to the All-India National Congress, interests whose views something to brighten what al- could be ignored only at the most ready promised to be quite a bright imminent danger of fierce inter- Christmas for those troops. They necine strife. Of these rival in- were going to have turkey und | terests, the most important are the Christmas pudding. the colonel Indian National Mahominedans, of told me, and needed a little en- whom all but a tiny fraction are tertainment in the evening.
not only outside the All-India
The components of rom- ance are all present: the three amateur explorers | who for ten
years had! spent their vacations in the desert "for fun" dis- covered by Sir Archibald Wavell in the ranks of his heterogeneous army; the quick inception of the idea that they might lead a small patrolling force we'd send a concert party to en- which would learn the tertain them." So said a NA.A.F.L. me. And having com- enemy's dispositions and pleted a tour with two of their intentions; the rapid for-purties on the English Sahara--- Salisbury Plain-I can well be- mation and training of lieve him!
A sporting colonel he. When I National Congress but are strongly suggested that the same four art--and increasingly-opposed to its armoured units to do the I chose this trip from a num-
ists come back on Christmas night claims and policy.
The role of the British Govern- and give them another show, he job, and the equally swift her he offered me. "What about Ietland, Middle or Near East,
us how to negotiate a cut 'cross readily offered his suite for thment in India is very far indeed change, when the fray West Coast of Africa, Gibraltar or country.
accommodation of the girls.
from being that of autocratic dis- proved successful, to mak-Malta"" he suggested.
penser of the country's political Salisbury After wading through pouls of Well, back we had to go over fate. Rather is the role that of was good enough for me.
water and mud, we found the the Plain to our "digs" with Au- ing this
guarantor of India's internal and an attacking!
This, believe it ordrey nursing a swollen ankle, but external peace and, as far as her So i went to see how some of force to mop up oases and the 1,200 d artists touring at not, was the famous orange grove as happy
as any little
Audrey political development and status Granges were actually could be. clear the back country, home and those far-distant lands--yes,
are concerned, arbitrator and guide. grown thereof the Marquis of
There are eleven Provinces in ultimately uniting with
Ailesbury's estate, for that's where
the general the army on the coast.
we were.
elections of 1937, the first to be held under the new constitution, returned Congress governments in eight out of the eleven. Since the Congress Party, as we have seen, is almost entirely Hindu, this re- sult want the possibility of seri- friction in those provinces under Congress governments where there were large numbers
concert hall.
45
An imposing building, fronted by huge colonnurles, which, Audrey, the soubrette, said, re- minded her of Anthony and Cleo-
Four. That was the sticky end. the tour with the Sing Song tric lighting, and the place was
"A grand audience, and worth any trouble we inay have had," she told me. And that's a point, you know.
After all that, I felt that the comfort of one's home mean: everything.
Of course, "Girls In Uniform" was a really tip top show, and be-
ous
of Mahoinmedans.
are entertaining the forces.
British India, and I made one blunder, 1 accom- panied a Grade A company first. This, in the profession, is con- They covered half
asidered a luxury cruise. May be million miles of desert, it is to them. roadless and with never a and one mere man--he's useful: patra!
Anyway, I set out with 12 giris repair shop in the vast he handles the pisno rather well Inside was the canteen and re- who were playing in "Girls infcreation room with curious con- expanse, these tanks man- the first all-girl show versions and additions to make it lieve me those girls are a little ned by Britons and New sent out by N.A.A.F.I. I finished a concert hall. There was no elec-high hat" since Queen Mary saw
it recently. Zealanders, few of whom
I can quite understand Leslie's perhaps had ever seen a They, so I understand, are the
"inferiority complex." He won't tank before. They kept a lesser lights, and thei: job is to lights on a stage consisting of have the piano on the stage with go around to out-of-the-way table tops! A couple of oli stoves them, and at an R.A.F. camp we with the camps
in an 8 h. ex-laundry were scrounged for the girls' dress visited, he insisted on it being French coming up from molor-van complete with piano, ing-room-a planket nailed across moved down to the avos--and in Mr. Gandhi's demand for "inde- Lake Chad within an hour the other way round?
The pianist is the driver or is it a corner-and the show went on. spite of all our efforts st got a pendence" for India was a power- fully descriptive factor in India's And what a show. There was jolt and lost a leg! of the appointed time, in Well, I thought, after the com- just one minor mishap, but who Still, Leslie managed to get his domestic relations. The Viceroy. after consulting representatives of fort of a de luxe couch, this would would worry about that? Audrey tunes out of it. He should. He's all major sections of opinion, an- an area of 10,000-foot be something of a change. It was put her foot through the stage, but accompanied Gertie Gitana, Hettynounced in October, 1939, that he volcanic peaks, with no Without the plano and the there were officer-gallants to re-King, Ann Penn and Derek Ol- guide but the sketchy several bags of dresses and other scue her and repair the platform. hem.
For two hours those four work- props, it might have been a re-
rendezvous
as cold as charity.
Six oil lamps were the foot-
And it is a matter of history that. Intercommunal relations de- 1937 teriorated steadily between and the outbreak of the war.
It will be seen, therefore, that
could do no more than promise that there would be full consulta-
And there's talent among those tion with Indian representatives maps of the region. Then latively comfortable 30-mile ride ed really hard and gave the troops girls. One of them is Moya Mac-after the war if this were found. together they took a fort over the Plain. Still, the twg some grand entertainment. I ask queen Pope, whose family have necessary and desirable, and that girls didn't grumble, so why ed the Commanding Officer what been at Drury Lane since 1740, during the war he could have a by surprise and carried it, should I?
'the men thought of these Moya appeared at the Lane with representative body of Indians the French colonel being
Ivor Novello, playing Fairy Queen associated with his government in The camp was certainly out of N.A.A.F.I. shows. the way. We had to have a des-
"They'll give you their own an in the 1838-30 panto.
a consultative capacity. shot down within twenty patch rider to meet us and show Sure enough they did when he no, let's keep the name out. She's settled nothing. Nevertheless, in swer afterwards," he replied. And what a personality is-but This reply pleased nobody and yards of its walls. The sur-
asked them at the end if they'd a grandmother, I had the pleasure view of the almost unanimous prise was so complete that pital in Egypt, and of the enjoyed it and would like the of delivering the good news to her feeling in India in favour of the passing natives, never captured mail pouch four back again.
during the show. Yet, she can do Empire's struggle against the We had a last look at this fam-the high kicking stuff with the Nazis, the Congress leaders decid- dreaming that the British which yielded all the in-ous old place at the Invitation of Last of Fem!
ed to do nothing to embarrass the could be so far from their formation that was want-spectacle we must have present- business, which just goes to show medan, Princes, and other opinion the colonel. And what an odd There's another side to this Government. Moreover, Mahom¬ base, gave them the Fas-ed. Doubtless there will be ed
what stuff these girls and men, steadily hardened against Congress cist salute.
a hundred other exciting of this ancient ancestry-now the have one of those little vans in action on their part would be set- There in the main dining-hail of course-are made of. N.A.A.F.I. and it became clear that any direct When the story is told, happenings, at present offlcers' mess-we sat around the which I travelled, with no fewer ting a match to a powder maga- there will be the incident unrecorded. The movie huge marble fireplace under the thun 74 machine-gun bullet holes zinc. Lord Linlithgow, therefore, pale light of oil lamps, surround-in it. The four artists, two mer continued his efforts to get agree- of the wounded man who scouts should lose no time ed by the imposing portraits of a and two women, were caught out ment among the various interests was carried 790 miles by in getting after this new famous family, descendants of in a raid, and had to lie under but without much success.
Robert Bruce, with Thomas, Lord the van for nine hours.
The Mafiommedan demand truck across the sand sequence. It may prove to Bruce, Earl of Elgin, futher of the It was "granny" who, held up now is for the creation of a dunes and flown from a be the most picturesque first Earl of Allesbury "in the in a rald, stopped an R.A.F. mo- |Mahommedan, India and a Hindu chair" at the head of the room. tor-cyclist, and rede pillion at India. à conception which is clear- French airfield to a hos-in the war.
It's my hope that I've done Jumpteen mph to be on time. ly ruinous to Indian national unity,
2