THE CHINA MAIL, MARCH 13, 1941.
CHINA MAIL
`--ŴINDSOR HOUSE
THE CHALLENGE
Nazi
Germany must hurry. Already many American 'planes have joined the operational | units of the R.A.F. and, now the Lend and Lease Bill is through, steadily such aid will increase. President Roosevelt's plan removes all financial ob- stacles. He recently show- ed in a couple of sentences that he understands the meaning of total war. "No major war ever has been won or lost," he says, "for lack of money. The more we produce.
the
stronger we are." Those are the precepts on which | Hitler worked and trium- phed. He knows what giant strength America can wield once she braces! her muscles on such wise instructions.
It all comes back to the Atlantic. Hitler can only hope to win by assault on Britain before our ab- solute mastery is restored in that sea. And the bat- tle of the Atlantic in turn will be fought in our fac- tories. More 'planes to help our ships,
more
Mater
SKATING ON 'THIN ICE
JAPAN: "What's the trouble,
JAPANESE MADE AGREEMENT
23 It's as safe
a
Japanese guarantee
Of
can make it."
The
Sign Double Cross
One auspicious April in the year 1889 two men were born.
tion.
their
By
Michael Foot
The
with the
with jackboot and sword. He loved laughter, and
Hitler had stifled laughter in countless homes across whole nations,
He has taken up the challenge. He has answered in the best way he knows. He has answered with the biggest, bonniest, stickiest, shimiest custard pie ever shied by the most expert pie-shier in the history of slapstick.
Page T
cause he sticks to his own busi-
ness he says some things which need to be said which only he can say perfectly, things which some of us forgot in these years gone by, and partly because we forgot them we were landed in this mess.. There will be a few of these of- fenders among those lords and ladies. I would like to watch them, If their hides and skulls were only thinner, I would like to be there to see them squirm, See Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomanies. addressing the mob beneath the Sign of the Double Cross, shout- ing, choking, shrieking, splutter- ing until the very microphone re- cells in horror before the avalan- che, whipping muss enthusiasm and maniac shouts with the re- frain that Jews, Liberty, Europe, Democracy, the foes of Tomanias, all these may be dismissed with one incompréhensible word de- vised from Hitler's example and Chaplin's genius--shtunk. the arguments of our own little Hitlers any better? Hete all for- eigners! Parliament was a talking Democracy shop! Perish Judah!
Were
was a hoax, every bit of it! Liberty stank.
Do you remember these buf- Toons who wanted nothing better than to march in processions, shout when they were told to, but always together, and consign to eblivion argument, debate, criti- eisin and all those things which distinguish citizens from serts? Sce Benzin Napolini, dictator of Bacteria (yes, he gets his pie square across the eyeballs), argu- ing and ranting with his dear, be- loved Adenoid and almost start- Ing
by an international crisis claiming that his barber chair must be higher. See Adenoid himself dancing a balloon dance with a globe map and collapsing into tears when the balloon bursts in his hands.
Charle certainly makes them look silly. But, after all, didn't someone tell us that Bonzini Na- polini was a fine Christian gentle- man? (Or was that about some” body else")
At least, didn't one or two of our womanish admirers of dictator- ship bail Napolini as a great and constructive statesman, a man of iron who made the trains run to time (are they still running) and kept the workers in their proper place? Did not someone write a pamphlet (is it still circulating?): applauding the abracadabra which Benzini disguised under the title of Fascist corporations? And did not they tell us that Benzinli and Adencid together could go on bal loon dancing with the world with- out a final bust?
MYSTERY AIR FURU Hollywood when the other was had learnt the meaning of love of people in the city alone, after.tickles who will go back to their
What has happened to the Italian air force? Ans- wer that conundrum and you may have discovered a fact of considerable im- portance.
still failing to sell his faked pic ture postcards.
Neither forgot those early days of trial. One jearnt to detest poverty. The other learnt to hate the poor.
and pity and tolerance and pathos, The other had mastered hate and derision and contempt.
bombers to blast his inva- sion ports and strike the| weapons from his hands, more tonnage from our shipyards, Britain one in an Austrian town-ship call- standing erect while full ed Braunau, the other in the East
See, finally, the little Jewish End of Londen. One was chris- American production tened Adolf
tailor who went to the war, fired Schickigruber, the
his gun the wrong way, got into comes to our side. This is other Charles Spencer Chaplin,
the wrong army, flew his air
lost the summons.
his We must
'plane upside-down, Both had genius and
memory for twenty years and re- rise to it as we rose to nares, (slightly modified to suit
turned incredulous and unabash- the demands of publicity) were forbade the mention of his Vienna
ed to face the meet the same intimate destined to become better known days, returned only
brutal, ridiculous See the little Gestapo. genera-smack of vengeance on his lips,
Jewish peril after Dunkirk. When than any other of their
girl whom he befriended. and never spent a penny in his
We can see it all now. Charlie we have divided those fig-| Both tasted poverty following years of triumph to reward the
Chaplin is not, us many people old comrade who had shared with ures of shipping losses by the death of their fathers, but one
I remember hearing years ago suppose, himself a Jew,
but he showed his talents early and him back in Vienna his last hunk
that Charlie Chaplin was go has chosen the Jewish tailor and - ten we shall have victory! brought money to his mother be of bread,
ing to make a film about Hitler, his girl to speak as the champions in our grasp.
the of ten, while fore the age
Both profited from their up-
I felt a faint tingle of excitement of all men who suffered heñcath other moped at his mother's side
bringing. One learnt to excite
Moloch and all who and later begged his bread through men's virtues.
other dis- at the pit of my stomach. Millions the Nazi
Will there be any the streets of Vienna. One was
covered how abjectly men could of people in every land must have would defy it.
felt the same. Tens of thousands among those whose sides he making las first motion picture in
be ruled through their vices. One
they had heard the good news, drawing-rooms and still jabber must have baffled their fellow-their mild but shameful anti- travellers on the other side of the Semitism? Tube with an unconscious smile, When the war ended one was snigger, grin or guffaw apparently already an international figure, provoked by nothing more jovial while the other was still an un- than a London Transport station
Our trust in Charlle One remembered his debt to known political spy paid by the map.
A dozen his old comrades and liked to re-
German army.
years something much surer schoolroom turn to the
of his later one toured almost every stormtrooper's goat-like faith in youth and perform his antics to capital city in the world, and was his Fuchrer. Then came the blow The size of air forces is amuse the children. The
cheering, laughing Some oaf in America was appar by other mobbed
multitudes. He was thrilled by ently protesting that Hollywood! the most closely guarded resolved on nothing but revenge,
so many happy faces. The other should not tamper with politics of military secrets. No one
Was attracting vast multitudies We knew it. We had these cafs of faith. They accepted his too. He roared and yelled at our own, pompous little asses who can be certain and guesses may be far wide of the doubt may be due to the them from the platform, but in snooped into our own music halls the ante-room afterwards he and would be telling us next that mark. Italy was estimated acknowledged superiority would boast how shrewdly he had a dirty crack by Max Miller was "the magnet peròss this causing tension in the Inter in 1938 to possess more
of the British pilot. In all drawn
national Settlement at Shanghai individual combats since
Little did they realise that censor- than two thousand good,
ship at the Holborn Empire would
He has done more still.. He has usable machines and from Italy entered the war he
rob the British people of one of excelled all his former services to the best platforms where political our kind. He has taken all the that day to the outbreak has displayed his prowess
Now, ten years later still, one reputations are made and broken doctrines of dictatorship, the of war Italian factories over the Italian even more
has become the recognised enemy And now it seemed that the Mon doutrines of regimentation bich. surely than over his Ger- of civilised mankind. "The mean roe Doctrine and the film Moguls degrade the dignity of man utd were presumably busy re-
were to condemn the has exposed them for the chums pairing the losses inflicted man rival. There are also est man in all the world" as he together
was once properly described, has cinema to inanity. Charlle was to that they are. in Abyssinia and Spain
some indications that part gained the power to unleash his be allowed to bait the foreman He hus asserted the rights *of and profiting from experi- of the Italian air force is hatred against his fellow men on und bespatter his buss, but never the Individual against the moh
a continental scale. Millions of to pull the throne away from be strous gospel which Hitler en- ence in these two theatres being re-equipped to en- ruined lives and billions of tears neath the worst and most mam- throned, but to which sonte even meth Imposture among meni: In this land have been ready to Yet Britain's mastery of able it to face better the are his harvest.
The other watched all those Those were anxious days, but we bend the knee. Charlie will laufe the air in the Mediterran- Superior British machine.
come at last, as a challenge to himself. He was been practically undisput- armoured now against all the supreme individualist and Hit- kinds of wishful thinkingler had sworn eternal war against those who demanded this: that we rightly search for right to think and feel themselves. He was
dunghill."
vas than the
England should have vaunted the first and her alliance with still the most harshly-treated of Hitler's enemies. Instead, we were often niggardly in our sympathy. Indeed, there were even some in England who whispered Hitler's
mystical nonsense of race. Perhaps after all, they said, the Jews only got their deserts. them. He has given to the little Charlie Chaplin should shame Jow the place of honour in his greatest masterpiece,
ean and Middle East has/ But is that all? We are so/events and must have seen them/can afford to forget them. It has the nonsense : Dut of them. And
ed.
perhaps we shull · not live inda: ¡civilised world until Milk Alm băn "Be" "BROWN”In every mpİTƏT ZENYE before multitudes. Who HÎE" WEEK
· godü consciences and laugh Chun-
Charlie Chaplin is no politician. | selvey sick.
'How can we explain the any other less comfortable for
the master of pathos and Hittor. He de a custard plo export-und not:|: From the "Loudon, Evening) mystery? Part of it no explanation...
was hacking all pity to shreds even a philosopher. Yet just be Standard," December 10, 1940.