Long Knives And Nazi Children
TAS
WA
By SEFTON DELMER
on
there ever a confidence, was astonished genuine and definite telling Hiller in Venice of the arsarsimtion of the Polish plot against Hitler by Storm Minister of the Interior at the Troop chief Ernst Roehm in tremendous effect produced that hot fetid summer of upon tim. June-July 1934?
"Hitler changed colour, mut- tered that this was bad news indeed, and that such nele were catching."
un-
Was the famous Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1034), In which Rothm and anything from 00 to 200 other Germans
The "almost pathological were coldly murdered by the SS. at Illtler's command, the balance of Goering also comes act of a cold, calculating despot out in a despatch of Sir Exc he paid to anxious to rid himself of Phipps on a visit
what Inter WAS 10 become famous estate *ot
power he considered dangerous
to his own?
Pretext?
HERE it is now before us again In Volume Six of our own Foreign Office's "Documents on British Foreign Polley, 1010- 1930,"
The Brilish Foreign Office is divided in its verdict.
Sir Eric Phipps, Wo om bassador in Berlin, thought there had been a plot,
This is shown by the des- patches he sent London, now published for the first time,
But his chiefs in the Foreign Office, Sir One Sargent Sir Robert Vansittari, both look the view that the plot was
Goeringe
Karinhall,
Не reports how Goering, dressed in
rubber suit of the German Air Force, with a huge
hunting knife stuck in his belt,
orted to his guess from a buli- ring on the beauties of some German bison he had produced before them.
TE
Unreality
HE then rushed off and gave them another 1oclure <1% bird life. Then he led them 10 dead Swedish wife, the Germanic mausoleum of his
Says S. Eric: "The whole;
an proceedings were so strange as
invention of Hitler's to give him to convey a feeling of unreality. the pretext for eliminating But they opened a window on Roctim, and making his on to Nazi mentally, peace with the army.
Sir Erie Phipps reports the "The chiet impression was change in Hiller himself after that of the almost pathelle the Night of the Long Knives. Talvete of General Goering "Something has changed in who showed us his toys like a Hitler, who struck me at our big, ist, spoilt child.... first neoling ay an 'unbalanced, being is last week-end can only have made him still less normal,
Muttered
"MUSSOLINI, so my Italian colleague informs me In
"Documenta
"And then I remembered there were other toys Innocent, though winged, and theso might
pome day be launched on thelp murderous
THE CHINA MAIL, TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 1957.
I POSE FOR A ROBOT
Mr. Bald at mg
an a Cethic chale
with a rubber
die balanced an
My head
'They've ruined this
park' says Epstein
SIR
be looks at the open-air
sculpture exhibition
JACOB EPSTEIN sively at the rhododendrons mission in the Fame child[ko] }, apparently takes a dim. and said, "Next time you spirit and with the same child-vie w of mechanical want your bust done, come
ke glee."
sculpting. At the opening to me."
the Tate Gallery, is one of the few exhibits which seem to have been touched by human hands. Some of the others-incongruous lush grass shapes against the and dazzling flowers -- seem to have been sculpted by a robot gond berserk,
For instance there is Our diplomats aml the day of the London County And so I would-it I had a twisted crusly plece of Foreign Office certainly had no Council's exhibition of around £1,000 to spare.
bronze called "Bird." on Birish illusions of what lay ahead of
Sir Jacob's only work exhibit-, Near H on the grass Foreign Polley 1919-1939" (ILM. all of us after that Night of the sculpture in Holland Park ed at Holland Park, a bronze sparrow
Long Knives.
he waved his stick expres- head of "Esther," sent in by marvelled at the sym-
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35
'Smile, please," said inventor George MacDonald Raid s. qud with a molše
like an Underground train his mechanical Epstein went lato action
HAS tom day I became the first [AS automation caught up on art?
fomale victim of a mechanical sculpting machine. Its
inventor, middle-aged George MacDonald Reid, lives tucked away in a Marylebono mews cottage which he has converted into four com- pact cabin-like rooms. His mechanical Epstein, as he fondly calls it, is in the cellar,
"I don't know the first thing about sculpting," Mr Reid said proudly, "the machine docs it all."
'It won't bite'
We descended the rickety stairs. There, in the scarlet-painted cellar, was the Thing. "It won't bite," said Mr Reid as if talking about some docile family pot.
Round it a few white plaster heads untouched by human hands-peered blindly through the dim light. Mr Reid sat me on a Gothic chair and balanced a rubber disc, suspended from the ceiling on my head.
"It's made from the plunger out of my kitchen sink," Mr Reid told me. But even this touch of domesticity did not entirely quel my apprehension.
Suddenly the lights went out. Оло piercing beam dazzled my eyes. Switches dicked. The chair on which I WRS sitting revolved. And, with a noise like an Underground train, the machine went into action.
by SARAH ROTHSCHILD
AND THIS IS THE RESULT
I began to feet a rising nostalgia for thos Royal Academy chocolate-ban portraite,...
"All over," said Mr Reid, like a dentist after a nervy filing,
In fact, he had taken 300 different- profile photographs, the first step in the process of automated sculpture,
While the film was being developed
The needle dug out a mile. My smile.
"It can even get the twinkle in the eye" Mr Reid cald proudly. Obediently the noodle
plaster went to work on the blank
eye. Grudgingly, I
in a tall test tube, Mr Reid told me how watched the twlekle appear.
he first had the idea of creating his
machine,
Sculpture at the Royal College
of Art,
071
While her husband gazed at strong face, Lady the gaunt, Epstein said: "My husband is a busman's holiday. Не works very hard indeed.”
Last month he completed his Christ in Majesty for Llandaff which Cathedral,
Die hus described as "my greatest act of faith,"
Sir Jacob is very annoyed about Esther, "It was put in without my permission," he said. "People seem to think I'm dead. But I'm very much alive."
He certainly looked it, this 77- year-old rebél,
the strode vigorously across the green. dressed in a grass. With him, brightly flowered taffeta dress, was his wife, whom he married secretty two years ago, after she had been his model and geere- Mary for several years.
"My wife seems
in- more terested in the foxgloves," Sir Jacob joked
as Lady Epstein back. gazed through a hole In a Jagged piece of cement called "Standing Figure" at a less cul-
Sir Jacob had a hearty laugh at a 4-high bronze statue of a standing woman, naked, with her arms behind her
"When I was in the Array I used to do caricatures of the boy's in the Mess," he said. "But I got bored
with funny noses and hairy legs. I wanted a true likeness."
+
1
MT Reid was comforting. "Not many women would dare to see such a reallsite Ilkeness of themselves as this. No flat- tery here."
I agreed heartily. In fact I began to feel a rising nostalgia for those chocolate-box portraits. I saw, and disparaged, "at Royal Academy.
Shrunken head
tho
But there I was. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth, Looking, to my prejudiced eyes, like a shrunken head from the South American jungle.
his latest
From that day Mr. Reid was a man obsessed. As soon as he was demobbed he started col- lecting surplus war material: A
I longed for a kind Mr Gunn, camera from 1 Spitfire, Odd
to make my eyes a fraction scraps of metal and wire.
larger. Or a persunsive Signor Then he retired to a derelict Annigoni to curl my hair
En Creation the right direction. plumply farm in the country.
under way. After a year's hibernation he emerged like triumphant magician; the robot MORE INSPIRING
was ready. sald.
"She's no Venus, is she?" he "And now come into the Holy
"But in fact this statue is
Mr of Holles,"
Reid tivaled corner of Holland Park.
sald almost exactly like a prehistoric reverently, leading me through "There's a beautiful old
Venus I know-only about a an arch into an even darker stump of oak tree over there,"
hundred times bigger."
cellar. There, through a dense she sald "It's much more
Less prehistoric were beautiful than
the undergrowin of wires, Aubes, some of the
mid-19th-century exhibits of lovers and swliches, I could just things here,"
the Orangery. The discern a white half-sculptured sculpture in That was my main impression. Lo has spent £6,000 convert-head. tou. The natural surroundings Ing the Orangery and the Ball- "It's really quite simple," Mr sparkling in the summer sun- room of Holland House into a Held explained, "it works on the shine, formed a vivid contrast refreshment room and beautiful- same principle as those contour to man's distorted interpreta- ly arranged conservatory gallery, maps you must tions of Nature,
Again it was a question of school." Sir Jacob Epstein looked the surroundings being more But to me it seemed a far cry defiantly at a reclining nymph. inspiring than the exhibits. The from those homely lille "They've ruined this park," he Victoria nymphs seem to have diagrams of mourning I did in said, "but there are too many of been carved out of white butter, the geography class. my confederates-or contem- But which is worsetils or poraries here for me to say the contemporary Lot's Wife
made of shimmering Perspex?
As I was leaving, Sir Jacob said: "I could do a beautiful bust of you. You've got a good head." He added: "Remember, these things can't mechanically."
much more."
Lady Epstein added her view on the nymph. "I dont like the disposition of the legs."
By this time Sir Jacob had passed on to a tall nude granite statue of a man. It was called Granite.
done
Looking at the billowing green trees, the irises, hydrangeas and scarlet tulips. I knew what he meant. My faith in the human of touch is restored.
Now, I like that boy's work," said Sir Jacob. "That boy" la 36-year-old sculptor John R. Skeaping, ARA, Professor
have done at
the half-
Mr Reld removed finished head and put a new untouched cylinder of plaster in its place.
Relentless
A rotating needle, remotely controlled, fabbed into it with relentless
mechanical accuracy. Skin and bone were scratched into shape. Soon the head began to looik almost human and vaguely famillor,
masterpiece with relish "Geo-
Mr Reid surveyed Eraphically it's you,” he said... If Mr Reld is right It's time I made some drastic changes in the scenery face-lift at least,
Or else and robot whichs gives Complimentary sittings- and it can name ita price,
*
TECHNICAL FOOTNOTE.
This is how Mr Rolďa machina works:
300 pictures are taken for a fim as the subject ro- volves in a complete circle, Each plature is then projected on to screen and the image is traçad by a pointer on the worden. As Mr Rold traces the outline connecting arm operates a aut- ting needle which shapos the block of plaster. The process is repeated 300 times.
London Express Service.
DIPLOMATIC DERBY
OFF TO A GOOD START