*Page 6
THE
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1956.
FOGBOUND
fog
By Gerald Allen
had been
T hanging about all day.
But after dark, it came down with geance.
I
Wo walked on a few yards hod at the "Black Lion."
found ourselve In a had a feeling that a horde of trighbour's garug. Deuced Chinurnen might suddenly leap voreleas of him to leave the on ne from behind.
who acting voti- prien open, and i It took
two inult to Injury nearly to rull
with his hours to get home from the us down
were feeling our way out again. office, and I arrived feeling left Gunter to guide him in frozen and fed-up. Molly and bottled on alone.
WRA
П
11 me
out visiting
Home
out vara
CBT a we
It was quite a surprise when a car did crawl up to the curb. "Can you help me and Cedar woman's voice Corden
culled.
It ilves
A
(1
who
་་
Mro Wad
Ashley, There were quite a few men friends. I thought of going at the crosroads trying to si
few doura from us, Thu had got in
Molly doran't like her; neither to see her home, but declied
In fact, novie her tangle 1 heard Lureus's voleo does Mrs Lucas, she was probably on
of the other
to women NUFT and insinged to find him. He
tunk it's with her. way already.
and I decided to organize the get m whole
can't fix They
out Unfortunately, because things
They don't I switched on the electric fire
a half-bottle of the rest of the team wore une much about her. and got vul
so the two of us know whether she's a widow or rum left over from Christmas, vo-operative,
ee much of her Just doesn't doubics. worked together Stuar
1 And couple
Instund Personally, things seemed a bit brighter.
She always her rather nice, In fact, the fog strmned to have
my jokes Geras to appreciate the makings of adventure to
conversation—n intel- be a sort of challenge.
ligent sort of women. mother lot and decided that I wasn't the sort of man to shirk a challenge, and said as much to the cat, which had come in
complain conditions.
to
alxrut
tul hat
weather
One more strink and I was ready to face the perils of the night new revue my beloved wife fran the clutches of the fog-or, at least, to walk up to meet her. tho bus stop and Seizing my coat and a torch, I made for the door.
Exit
Jet
"Goodbye, PUNI. Alles, fra dizen of the Fog Age." I cried to the ent.
The cat turned over and went to sleep.
The fog was thicker than ever bt, with the sure istinet of the hunter, followed the life of front gardeni made good progress.
Ittus
and
down the road, I Halfway teaally ran up against Gunter,
"Going home, old man?" he asked in a patronising voice. "I'm just going up to the main nood to lend a hand directly the traffe,"
"You'll be a big help, you're walking the wrong way," sneered,
"Nonsense
You've lost your pense of direction
"I tell you you're going to wards hone," I snorted. "I'm going towards the main road." Gunter got quite heated about it (he's the son of chap who can never believe he's wrong), but finally I convinced him he just might be mistaken.
After half or hour, the traffic seemed thicker than ever, and we found that nine or ten cara were jammed in a cul de zake,
of the drivera WITC Some
to be abusive, bu: hellnod people like that can never grasp the simplest directions,
✩
Eventually, someone asked un how to get to the Black Llop
عرفا
I told her I was waiting for Meally
•
have buser
stopped running. I'm afraid," said Mrs Ashley
Wo chatty
bil JLEN: eventually } Kot Jun the car beside her, to direct her back
to
A
since
csap ity. stranger to the district, we fell it mur duty fo guide him there. Once inside, we planned the Job of treetlust the whole trufle in absrut five minutes.
The problem was ridiculously put sample when you really your mini loft. We doelstel its send our scheme to one of
moloring the
Organisations, serted out the local
fler we'd tangle
But when we came out into the night again, we found the rond was clear Evidently, the drivers had been set safely uni their way by vur
previous efforts.
Lucas set off for home, and I felt my way to the bus stop There didn't seem to be a soul nhout, and the fost closed in
dirty
Wke thought
eutton-wool. Sherlock Holmes
Cesday Gardens.
Mr Ashky was very
when I told her we natured were lost And when we found wexxi
it strelect
roundabou! three times, she fairly shrieked her head off Once we got into the throads.
even wo****
conditions were We took several Turnings at random and finally fetched up in a dismal looking strel, which neither of us re- membered being in before,
get out and in-
"I'd better quire," | sald.
There was a faint light show- pushed ing in our house, so i open the gate and went up the hort path The place hat a
t forbidding look Eeric was the only word to describe
t
I hesitated a bit before I
Taci Walsen watching thu
in groped about for the knocker yellow blanket from their cosy at gave a umid rol-tat, roxis in Baker Street, and of the sinister Dr Fu Manchu
The door opened
SOFTY to trouble_
I
gliding silenity through the began
"So you're home at last,” said Molly
aerid murk.
It seemed a night for adven- ture, and stry moment ! ex- pected a car to glide up to the curt und 11 husky Demine voler to cull, "Quick, jump in.
help." I noti
It must have been the rum and the biller I'd
Gentleness means so much G
ENTLE moments come as a welcome pause in the hurry of modern living. And a gentle smoke brings needed solaco, too. That's why this new Philip Morris, mado gentle for modern taste, has such special appeal for our younger smokers. Enjoy the gontle pleasure-tho fresh unfiltered favour --- of today's now Phillip Morris. Ask for It in the smart now packago.
Anyone can get lost in a fog. and st think Molly was un- reasonabl about my being in Mrx Ashley's car Butt 1 ve been in the doghouse ever since.
COOPYRIGHT)
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Continuing 'DATELINE & DEADLINE'... the 'inside' stories of RENE MacCOLL
MEMORY REFRESHER.
BRITISH
| HONDURAS
GUATEMALA
Ins February 1048 British Hondura wRS threatened with in- vasion from Guatemala. The Government answered this threat to twist the ilon's tail by rushing marines and the cruiser Shefeld to spot, the trouble Result order restored ...quiet... crim.
CHAPTER FOUR
F
OR
1
some little time there had been trickle of odd mes sages coming out of Belize the capital of British Honduras.
Now there were rumours of something big-but no The sure what. one was cruiser Sheffield had been paying a visit to Belize, had jeft-and WAR now racing buck.
• IF you want to be a foreign correspondent,
have to
you
HOW TO GET DEPORTED
...HOW NOT TO BE A GOOD REPORTER
be ready to keep on at an assign- ment for much longer than you originally thought it was
Stories have a way of going to last. telescoping. You have to be persistent. You have got to keep travelling; skip I cannot think of a better sleeping.
example of this sort of foreign assignment than the strange opisode of the "threat" to British Honduras in February 1948.
about getting their own man on to the same plane, took
Liste their also They about letting me soe the message from my London office. When I finally got it, there was only just enough time for me to hurl a few thlogs into a bag, and hurtle for the airport.
*
seemed At Bel Airport ull
dull. No une peaceful and shower! the slightest sign of Nothing was hap- excitement
that Alex Exevipt pening
The
Alexander Cufford, then of the Daily Mail and 1 were cle mising that day's ng story by about threequarters of an hour.
late
WRDE
wis principally evern- Ing was slip-up No. 2: The plin which had deperited usin again-- taken off Belize had with
luggage stij Jaret.
to Guatemala City, coj- tal of the "enemy" country,
All Gir
LOSING
SHIRT
MY
4
vd.
Then
out it all catho Marines, in full battle-array, had been mished out to the alrneld while we were having our baths; Jiad dug silt trenches; instailed high-anglo guns for A.A. work, machine-guns," and dug and bomb abulters. They were stand-
a dismal meal porting: Take nothing for grant- Culting short
an dump of nt or decrying hotel, we went in search of a
Hot baths, clean shirts, cool My by now through the night the Shet-
on "battle wutch." It would have alory. Plumaces trom
drinks, good meals-there is all made the perfect lead to our and going. feld were coming
stories. and on the jetty the Navy (the the time in the world for those crew of 700, later on. Tomorrow, the day Sucfeld corried
after. But there will never be and 10 Marines) had set up another chance to write today's made any happler by the know- shere I.Q. with ample
signal apparatus to kep in touch with story. the shio. A shore it was even then setting forth on a "show- ing the flag" march through and about the capital
1 sought Alex and Anyway,
Wireless Cl the Cuble depot which was reached by exterker flight of wisden stair«,
und sat down b bat cul pieces.
DRINKS AND
CHIT CHAT
ver i felt o first-class chump it was then--and I wasn't
ledge that we had been neatly Inveiled into going out of cle- culation while the operation was
ended 0.5 emergency quickly
it bimy up. Wc decided have
and off *memy."
Es
do off we went to this official's "my"
house and wasted time with Guatemala City.
now,"
mrt but
The vnough. rang, and in the
sanded
right, both here with me
our
# wife ail
a look at the
we flew
'THROW THEM
OUT'
to
the baths and the drinks and the A cungorahip on our stuff was chit-chini.
at There was one ile in force The cable offre. I thing that did moke 145 a bil tried the radio station, Laugh- We suspi-tous.
quite ably, no censorship there. I sent Now carne slip-up Nu. 3.
lele back a hili, detailed account of diretsed whether it was worth suspicious
sut- a student demonstration at the going all the way back to the phone on
British Legalion. again to ree whether sequent conversation Brick! there was any news of sur lost saldimit
renssuringly-"It's bags
Finally we decided against it they are und I hate to admit that the deciding factor was that me int the ofknals with whom we had been talking earlier bad pressed What was up? The suggestion
to his besttvo ufser tis to retum that Chatemiala, In
LEX and I stared at one on nega-
we had sent off our stories and fury mutual banana Sta
in which oliver bouring Traditionally regarty British Luckily we both had our port- have a bath. Honduras Us an frredentist geel able typewritets
In our sweaty, tired slate the shaving
We prospect
tremendously of hers, might be contemplating turkie, but that was all.
out and our pinonce tok us What was there to warlike action s&med indiciVAIS= were aweuty and crumpled and tempting.
gratefully sinking ՄԱՄ change Fired --- longiNK :
Le ined by going back to the ly
airfield? We had seen it at couple of large pink gins In the hurts. No shiria
ward-room when much butan We moodily bumped into town morning, end there had
the way of jy of life venished as one of have us all thrown out. atrodas,
there to jaigle- nothing ked and t the impres
display beyond martial
poilerman sort of shanty town, coloured fashioned of festering corrugated revolver.
about ut hon, spattered at mouth of a river.
tar-fetchert. And y
In Fleet Street they get me down to Belize from my Washington post. They cabled.
The first thing went wrong. The cable company delivered the mess-ge in error to the eflec of oue of our greatest competi-
Immediately tora They
811
son of #
und
the
Was
with
one
B
We went back to the loose- boxes at the hotel, spruced up as best we could, and then set IT come back
next day-and A signal bad I wasn't lie. out for the jetty
The amusingly the officers of named Impartial newspaper re- over that the Sheffield would like us to marked: "R. M. MacColl, of the
be Daily Express, must dine with them.
sidered perSU
vno
A
we were
1
▸
поль
con- vrata in
country Their editor, a character call- ed David
at our Bela, called of the Balet and asked the manager to
the offers said. "Good show
after al the airfield this out noon." In not going back I was break- "What was?" we ask t
a fundamental rule of re- fully. ing
LESLIE DANIELLS pierces a curtain
and discovers that
FEAR STILL LURKS
IN EAST BERLIN
N the Russian zone of remarkable line of Canaicitos no car-awning democracy.
shabby,
Tho
crodil,
manager,
much whis refused to be high-pressured,
Next we had that steps were being taken al the Foreign
Texar~
Ollice minant.
against the wall to let me pass,
I was horrified,
You
Of course, world politics are real and
But if carliest. aren't politically conscious, the tuation in Berlin, just strikes
you as silly and degrading.
Office
Our arrests were im-
The Foreign pokesman denounced us all as "ithy British sples.”
We decided to get going. A quick rush to get visas from the Salvadorian Consulate and five of us--four other British re- porters and myself-caught the place to "neutral" San Salvador and hired a car to get us to the city.
Time
It was a long drive. went past. It was getting on for six. The city at last-then near- disaster.
A
CRASH....AND CROWBARS
battered foury, with a great
of a side road camo racing
thrusting
Berlin, next door to the has to be content with a dingy came as quite a shock to see. streets, the cross-hall, and in innumerable trundling along ornate cathedral, is the
across drays drawn by pairs of weary- small rooms you come
And this On
horses. National Gallery.
ex- masterpieces that galleries clse looking
be more Ihan seemed a substantial method of hibition there is the great where would
freight transport in the Russian collection of Dresden pic grateful to receive,
It is so stupid that this vart from glider balanced on its top. But by and large the ascen- sector. tures which have been re- dant pleces are finely displayed
city should be cut in two and rushed towards us and braked I did see people smiling--but turned to Germany from and that
the mostly means
that guards should pirouette at at the last moment. There was not many. Mostly they looked
the Brandenburg Gate, where collision and the girder, Maduntas long sojourn in Moscow.
curewom, and, if not
East meets West.
forward, crashed Their return
The gallory itself badly needs their clothes were unglamorous.
Not that they stop you. Their through this window. tacalift," and the attendants
We were trapped, Someone course, an international
Then we turned into the fob is mainly a customs check. dotched a crowbar and prised off Boomed as if they were ordinary event, raising the query: "civilians" recruited for the Stalinallec,
But it is a far different matter one of the doors. We shot out the brash, bright "How have they fared in occasion. Many are women, and monumental new thoroughfurp where the city moves into the
into treedom. bulit. Russian zone, There you remo exile ?" As far as I can almost invariably they were in the East Germans have
stockings. Stalin was still on his pedestal; andi thick
up against the sharpest frontier judge, they have returned in tweeds
Berliners or Bust Formidable guardians indeedi
and West in Europe. good health.
wonder for how long. Nobody had even got around to torting I saw and feathering it when the statue,
WALA
of
"D
But what constantly in- trigued me in inspecting
Main treasure
་
Fearsome
whisked
The
Stalinalce
19 quite
She cringed
m
The frontier
Thêm it was a question of every man for himself. We were fall hunched over our portables,
grinding out our stories.
Just
QB was finishing my I went to see one ut these story a telephone went, One of this stupendous collection, There is little to stop you
frontier posts of the end of a my colleagues answered it. "No, almost reverently staged, going to East Berlin as long as
he's not here," I heard him my. pleasant treo-Ilped aventhe. was that this was the Com. you behave yourself! Even su impressives in a tipteless
was told, Americans are shy of way even though it does end
60 Diagonally across the road was "No Idea, old boy-corry." Ho munist sector of Berlin.
a row of studs. That was as hung up. of going. The idea of suddenly
in a jumble of ruins, I went For predominantly this is being
When I got back to Washing ent far as I could go--and I did not Bway is more into one of its big departmental go quite as far.
ton I Journed that the call had a religious collection
and fearsome to them than to other stores, the front of which was
Fifty yards
ahead, clustered been from my colleague, Henry one of the greatest in the Westerners.
adorned by CDC uf those
around a hat, were green-garbed Lowrie, on late duty in New Before I went, I had been told world.
pompous and wearisome slogans People's Police, tommy-guns at York. He had placed the call t great deal about it.
hip. They surveyed me through on the off chance. "Just look at people's faces you find so much in evidence.
Beld
I glasses hoped they 1 could have taken that 'call Wa3 there"
urred. And
thought I was somebody very I would have been an hour or bocuse of tho tremendous
important!
more ahead of the crowd 1 For instance, its main amount of propaganda pumped
It was a state-owned store, But the most revealing thing could have dictated my stuff to treasure
the Sistine into you on both sides of the ja Madonna of Raphael, surely curtain,
be very institutional. You climbed about the frontier was a tele-Henry in a few minutes, and ho door 1 door up hard phone box. act just off the road would have pushed It across the
within American Atlantic on the master-cable- the most tender and human contrary and find the people all from
smiling.
stone steps, I was fuld the and just
a few minutes more, of all the religious paint- But I was wrong, West Ber- goods would be shoddy-und controlled territory.
That call-box had a wooden So this assignment, which had The cos. of shoes Ana ings.
lin has its acres of bomb damage they were.
screen in front of it and it begun with the cable going There it is enthroned at til, but its shopping streets are though this seemed a reason-
ended with was a symbol of the fear that astray,"
the tele ably isolated item was
phone call doing the same, lurke. the end of the principal cheerful. So are its people, in
I was there so that people gallery. The emotions leap their cynical way. East Berlin fantastic,
more than £10 a pair.. Just downright depressing. 1s
the Eastern zone could get your
crom the border, dart quickly looked Children (they look party
"elly-sllcker, glimpse of this masterpiece, deserted,
through some nearby bushes, neemed like some quite healthy) played here and Maybe we
and ring up their friends in so lone in hiding.
prominent Communusta being Berlin-without being watched This wealth of art from all the there among the ruins,
shown round. But going down by those binoculars, great schools of European' point.
the stairs a
cringed bug is almost overwhelming.
(COPYRIGHT)
88 you
was prepared to I
the
equivalent
uf
first Some streets were almost I suppose the sult of our from
There seemed no cars about A út all; certainly East Berlin was
MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN
AND LOTHAR GROWS AND GROWS--LIKE,
A WEED
10-22
HERE HE COMES!
AH-AIR? SORRY
I HURT YOUR
ROOF
woman
By Lee Falk and Phli Davia
(COPYRIGHT)
NEXT. SATURDAY: The
Sacking of General MacArthur
AMID THE CRASHING TIMBER,
HIS VOICE ROLLS LIKE THUNDER.
CONTINUED
TALK
ABOUT
MAGIC!
Have you seen
Admiral
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