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"THE" CHINA“ MAIL, SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 1956.
THE TRAGEDY OF FRANCE'S 7d-a-DAY ARMY
W
From SAM WHITE
Puris "Prince, he cried, what. an honour for me and how charm- THAT was behind
Ing at you to come to see me that Fancorous off." speech of the The Prince looked extremely French Foreign Minister, M. embarrassed, Pineau, which won FraRCE its only diplomatic victory for many years-the rather watery one of an invitation to Chequers, when Mr Eden and Premier Mollet dis- cussed "differences?"
"Finally he said: 'I am here In effect to pay my respects to your Exiellency, but I am also here because I am catching the same airplane,"
Dumaine comments: "I under- jook of pelulance stunni at that moment by the on Nehru's
face that high-conte Hindus have something in common with
Undoubtedly the basle factor wan D Deeling of military certain type of European helplessness, Induced by the mentality---snobbery." sombro state of the French army
What had happested to that army. Once the proudest In Europe,
Л major national tragedy. Today, more than half the French KATY L# in North Africh It is an army of tanks and lorries, hopelessly unsuited to
o! conditions
lightning
Kuerilla warfare.
Cat
Its sorry alory begins immedi- ately after the end of the war. A that time France had excellent colonial amy equipped for colonial warfare and offer- ed by men who knew North Africa This army was dis- banded in 1047
re-created.
and never
Then political bigotry and a zest for slushing the army budget began to play havoc with the army at hơine
DE GAULLE'S DEADLY BLOW
FIRST of all, officers tokeu
prisoner in the debtcle of 1940 were relired, then a special early retirement law WHEN enseted which robbed the army of virtually all its technicians.
Under
Juw Army engineers could retive immedi- atly and receive three years'
this
full pray Inevitably they left the army τα take up civil employment. Then came the deadly blow of the "purge" for which General de Grulle bears
a heavy responsibility.
Not only were officers who remained loyal to Vichy, dis- mimed but also those who sided with General Giraud in his feud against de Goulie. On top of that came the heavy loss of Junior officers and NCOsS In
Indo-Chine,
QUOTES OF
THE WEEK
MI MAURICE LYNCH, leader of the British small shop- keepers' delegation which con- ferred with Poujade: "I do not think it would be fair to our funities to visit the Folles Bergere while we are here."
British Aubassador BIR GLADWYN JEBB: "4: my view liul penco would be R much beller term than cold war."
MOSCO
WESTERN FASHION SHOW
TILES
BRITE MODELS
"Funny hats to sell a country where half of 'em are supposed to be making tractors and the
other half working in salt mines.”
One Of The World's Strangest Stories
PROPHETESS FROM
T
10 DOWNING ST.
By Peter Forster
from the shadow of her father's
and she moved into tyranty, Downing Street as his hostem Here she was in her element, at the heart of affairs, proud of the unela alte adored, and Justifying any extravagance by her noble blood and his position.
HE eccentric English. woman abroad hun become a legend. Sh. keeps a teashop in some remote village; she has lved for 40 years in the mative quarter, yel still wears her Cheltenham hat- baul: the purity of her Eng- the first time, with Lord Gran- army remains almost medieval lish accent is inatched only
Today, madu up almost
entirely of conscripts who serve an 18-month term, the French
In the rates of pay. A soldier Dy the perfection of her gets only 30 francs a day (about
patois; riots, revolutions, 7d), which is barely enough
timo-all pass her by. She to buy a small glass of bad wine. The lot of his family and
is indeed something of dependants becomes disastrous joke, yet not one to be laugh- once he is colled up. His wife ed al openty for our mirth is receives 2s. 3d. a day for herself | usually mixed with admira- und 2a, 3d, a day for each child this money being patd not by the army of the state but out of
æ municipal charity.
A
THE PRINCE
GRANTS
CONCESSIONS
LOT of friends of Prince Rainier are going to make
a lot of money out of the wed- ding.
The Prince is lavishing a crop
of concessions on them.
Already there are Ilm. TV und still-photo concessions
tion.
Here, too, she fell in love for
π
ville Leveson Gower,
ruke who soun look fright at Hester's determined pursuit, and expled Pitt's discreet offer the Moscow Embassy.
often
Now, the taste for travel and the Middle East ook cominant: of her.
What could the use of retired wulnster In England offer in comparison with
epitome
WESTER STANHOPE
tho life was wut there? Mehumet AN, the of tho eccentric ruker ut Egypt, reviewed his English lady abroad troops in her honour and Arab
and she packed chieftains loaded her with pre- schts.
Before kong the feting went to her head. She began to tulk of being crowned Queen of the Jews in Jerusalem. "And Indeed when she moved on to Palestine, she behaved us at the title were quite genuine.
Her Judyship desired to visit Damascus, Lady Hester rode in one afternoon unveiled and so overwhelmed the crowds by her
a most unfeminino right hook
seals for those to be treated as princes, and a single seal for ordinary gentlemen.
Yet her position was absurdly anomalous and insecure. Sho violently opposed and feuded with the Emir Eechir in whose dumains she lived, while he
of offending the powerful British Minister at Constantinople,
Hester never cared a Jol for public opinion and her rudeness became notorious. When an in- oflenave
Junior Minister marked at table that he had been given a broken spoon shu The exalted prototype for replied sweetly. "But you notice bearing that she was greeted as tolerated her only through fear
how Mr Pitt very
a goddess! The bazaar rose in all such ladies is surely Lady slight and weak instruments
her honour and coffee Was his
strewn in her path. Henter Stanhope. She stands effect ends?" And once unchallenged, if not as the her, she raged and called
when general disagreed with hin first, then certainly us the paralytic old kangaroo," most fabulous and eccentric of All English woman travellers.
Lady Hester was a great- niece of the fearsome Lord granted, and each concessionaire Chatham, niece of William
will have exclusive rights in his | Pitt the Youngor, a fashion- respective feld,
Finally, what may be termed "fairy tale" concession has
into being.
come
This will publish illustrated books for children based on the romantic story of the wedding.
Incidental intelligence: The Russian news agency Tass has applied for facilities to report the wedding.
IN
NEHRU'S
FACE
LIT UP
a newly published book a
But then Pitt died. One of his last requests was that the King should make provision for his niece for Lady Hester was
alone and prey to the spite and scorn of her enemies.
Her survival among the con- - Palmyra came next in her stant upheavals of Middle Itinerary. There the whole po- Eastern politics
was almoot the pulation welcomed her to their miraculous-and
peasants ancient city, where she was thought she must be protected crowned with flowers In the by some divine influence. ruined temple.
AUTHORITY
delusions
of
Eventually grandeur obsessed her mind; she took up astrology and the occult sciences; she had visions of her- self entering Jerusalem between She styled herself Queen of the Mahdi and the Messiah, and
horses the Arabs, and ordered the local kept two
perpotumly charge any saying sheik to
future saddled for when the moment a member European visitors an exorbitant should come,
At least one notable cap was Sir John thrown at her feet.
able young Womun who Moore died at Corunna played hostess at No. 10, to Hester's brother. Downing Street and sat at of his staff, "Stanhope, remem- entrance fee to the ruins, thus The
her the heart of social and politi. ber me to your sister." Tragic ensuring that
ally, her other brother, Charles, would remain exclusive. cal intrigue in the Prince
was killed in that same retreat. Regent's England.
Here her
IMPERIOUS
fortunes
triumph
of Mount Prophetess Lebanon, wearing a turban and smoking a hookah, never, forgot Nor reached she was Mr Pit's niece. This double blow nearly their peak. Back in Palestine did her formidable sense of mis- broke her spirit. Ever after she she fell victim to the plague and chief desert her as poverty and
lil-health intruded. The
wile liked to speak of Moore as her her mental balance, always pre- fance (though marriage Ead curious, was durther disturbed. of her doctor, arriving one day rather against Lady Hester's never been mentioned between She rented a disused convent on
Mount Lebanon place whose wishes, found herself at her first beside the local putrid smell was partly due to meal scated a former patriarch having been, trongman, rather inefficiently embalmed in one of its walls, sitting upright in an armchair. Lady Hester here entered upon that last phase of her fe during which she became a ilving legend in the Middle East.
Who then would have ex- them) and all her life she pected her to spend the greater treasured one of his gauntlet part of her life wondering gloves. through the dangerous lands of the Middle East, to die, im-
distinguished French Ambas-agiolog herself a prophetess, in sador and former head of Pro-
a rulnod convent on Mount
tocol of the Foreign Office, the Lebanon? late Jacques Dumaine, gives this revealing glimpse of the Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru. The scene: Orly Airport. The tbmo: 1951.
M.
Nehru has arrived in Paris for
M
"Nehru
SHIPWRECKED
She sought to retire from
Of course the Pitt blood was society for a time and in 1810 results, likely to produce extraordinary zalled for Cibraltar.
Hester's father, Lord Stanhope, was one of the most
From Gibraltar sho went to
RUDE NOTE
But it could not last. She was in debt all OVET the Levant. Her huge number of servants In 1814 she moved to another robbed her, and when the doc- house, farther up Mount Lo- for, suggested getting rid banon' at Djoun, where she lived them, .co
"Doctor, replied:
eccentric men of his day; a peer Malta, then to Greece. Then she the remaining 20 years of her think of my rank,"
vented throm
pro-
going to France
Anybody who has seen the strong
At last, in the face of several Foreign complaints,
were not
a brief stay on his way back to with Republican principles yet journeyed on to Constantinople, te, New Delhi. The Fronch Premier, a severe parent-who defended where she was narrowly
Plevin, and his Foreign the French Revolution In the Minister Schuman, accom-House of Lords and had the just because she was "dying to rugged wildernes of Lebanon Secretary Lord Palmerston panied by M. Dumaine, have coronets torn from the railings see Napoleon with my own will realise how strange it would threatene
to cut off her pon- hurried to Orly to greet Nehru. at his country house,
Duraino writes:
ren." Instead she turned to the be to encounter a solitary Eng her detris
It had been to her that fish noblewoman Ilving there. settled. Pitt uttered his famou pró- photle command to "roll up the
And at
This step unleashed a furious Djoun Lady Hoster map of Europe" after Napoleon's ruled
Mount with all the Derce stream of letters from victory at Austerlitz. Now bis authority and independence ot
Lobanon, including an iclly rude nieco would never need to con-
note to the young Queen Vic- When a tribal chieftain. sult that map nguís.
-French Colonal called Boutin toria. But Lady Hester's finan
was murdered in the desert she clal position was beyond repair. Salling from turkey with the harangued the Pasha of Acre Expeated inheritances failed to she Intention of wintering in Alex- until he went on avonging force, appear; her second brother, dico: was in a revolting
.
When will in her teens
(@
treated us with cold discourtesy. Hester was born in 1776, and He did not even invite us inside her mother died early. Attempts the Embassy when we arrived to discipline the girl (sho never there. Instead he immediately forgot how a governess tried to received
well-known Com-make her slim by strapping her munist, a noulratist editor, and (between wooden boards) unly Tunisian, nationallet.
made her môre, imperious, negotiations with him we found him vain and stubborn. On his departure I alone went showed her mettle, by tuming andria, ofre was shipwrooked off She seems to have been not in condition.
see him off.
stood there waiting calmly knocking him out with a
on a drunken Army officer and Rhodes, Lady Hester was kicker, the laust upeet that 62 villages condition, and the servante
·*As we
to escape, and having lost her rovere rapoa and mons than 500 almost out of control. for the airplane to take off, the most unfeminine right to the wardrobe, dormed a Turkish people killed as a result,
And there, in those surround- Prince De Ligne, the Belgian jaw. She grew into a large man's dresa, to the decided that Ambasador to New 3 Dolhl, handsome woman, six feet tall," "no costume had ever been to But to avoid any more such ins in June, 1889, this sirane, becoming to thNETA and from Incidents she took to providing magnificent and willy old woman dage it up and he rushed up to i Eventually Willinin Pitt, then, thes, oralww karena travellerim with crodeballe roer død.
Prime | Blinisine,aescusa han cinthing,
Kuumuta conduct, instkond with twɑ....
10
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