Pago
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1959,
WHILE HIS RIVAL OVERSLEPT
THE TIMES' BIG He crashed into history
London Times is a
Tvery important news.
paper even though it has not nearly na mány pages as its New York namesake.
It does not opérate pri-
BLUNDER And proved the aeroplane
marlly for personal preft The Times, no doubt
after
and indeed is owned by a consultation with Lord. Astor trust presided over by Vis- and high up members of the count Astor,
editorial staff, decided that it wae me for Mr Selwyn Lloyd, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and make mon.
One of ile most remunerative columns is on the front page and is headed by the single word "PERSONAL”
Bui
do not imaging at The Times would descend to gossip. Not at all. In fact the personal column is largely devoted to the wees of gentlefolk who want to augment their meagre savings by beting na tutors, roclai tuides, companions.
Affairs, to resign way for a stronger
Now If Lord Beaverbrook had come to the some decision he would have ordered his Delig Express, Sunday Express and Evening Standard editors (10 open fire with all their guns and 07 ver let up until victory was
attained.
But The Times realises that
Politically the Beaver is such not ali is woe. If your daughter on honest rullan that when he becomes engaged to be married sets out to cvenski a political and you arO somebody-ar you murder he wear an assin's think you
are somebody-the hat, dark glasses and carries a announcement must appear in -spiked chub. Not even a slago the appropriate column of The detective would fail to grasp his Times. Later on you will pay in pupost. additional announcement that the And marriage has taken pingo.
in the course of time you will buy space for the joyful new that a son or daughter has boon
born.
The Thunderer
Frequently in the Houma of Commons on M. P. will quote from The Times either in
agreement or disagreement with The Thunderor (as it used to be called) and if there is available will usually space The Times find room to print the quote in Its Parliamentary report,
But perhaps the most im- portant column in The Times is the one that publishes lettere to the Edilar. What dignity or arrogonen. The Times olier publishes or does not publish and gives no explanation to the writers. In short The Times is a great news. paper in which commo relai profil plays only B amall
Before
Socialists
been made by the we should have been accused of unpatriotically stabbing the Foreign Secretary in the back in the course of interlid tional negotiations?”
Blunder
was not a freak
LIGHT today is universally accepted as common- place. A jet airliner streaks across the Atlantic in a few hours... and no one takes much notice. It happens every day.
20
samd
Yot at the beginning of the patience and courage which he century the neroplane was con- possessed. sidered as much of an imposuibid. Everything that could freak on the flying souver le to wrong" did so wrong in those day.
carly years. Propellers adrit, planes flow out of con- trol, engines stopped dramatical- ly with pilot and machine in mid-air
Just 50 years ago a' few hardy, deformined, confident plongers wero braving the scorn of their follows to prove that the aero plano had à corrunereink future.
Therd werd cheers and coun-
Tho Wright Brothers had fer cheers, de woll, de come
proved in 1903 that it was pos- wholesome Jaughter when Belwyn Lloyd walked out of sible for Man to fly. But their the Chunder preparatory to his efforts attracted little attention at the Ume, and few men kad fight back to Genova. On the the vision to realise the posibi- whole both the Torios and So- cloflair felt, that The Times hedities of power-driven aircraft. blundered Instead of weaken-
The Impossible"
Foreign Secretary's
Inst the poron-which was the obvious By contrast The Times writ- purpose of the article-it had. ten by gentlemen for Indies and actually strengthened
Event about its Lloyd at a critical moment in gentlemen,
with the his career. adif-appointed task
utmost decorum and sensitivity. Without waliing for the resump- tion of Parlament after the rocent Whitsun redcko, it opened its main news page with double cohann headings to this effect:
Primo Minister's plans for Mr Selwyn Lloyd
*
Eating Strain of Offico
Possiblo transtor stifl
several months ahead.
Even we fough Canadions can recognise gentility when we see
.
But
tho on July 25, 1909, widespread scorn charged atra matically to universal admira- tion.
Why then did Sir William
little Timer, Haley, Editor of the commit such a blunder? Who
advised him?
Fortunately we have Kan- dolph Churchill always with us. The political situation has only to boil and Randolph appears like genie' by a pantomime. "Who put the Editor of The. Tines up to 7" shouted Ran- dolph in the columna of Lord Beaverbrook's Evening Stan- dard,
Note how those headlines are careful not to suggest that Selwyn Lloyd's to be given the it.
London Letter —–—–—–
One man achieved, the lin- possible: Louis Berlot,
valstile Frenchman. Changel erossed the English from France to the white cliffs of Dover in a primitive, fimsy dying machine. Bierlat's success and the pres- lige which his crossing won for hit must have left a bitter taste In the mouth of Hubert Latham, mother Frenchman, of British extraction.
Lont before, Bleriot's success- ful flight, Latham had been at templing to cross the Channel in his man-made machine. Time after time his efforts were frus trated and he ended up, machine and all, in the cold Channel water.
Merlot And kis plánés.
into the great, plunged crashed on top of trees and landed in mid-river. Each time he dragged, himself, un- periurbed, from the wreckage, whook himself
of n ro debris--and izled ägsin Yet this man who defied death n hundred times in his bid to beat the Inw. of gravity was actually deterred by the though: of trussing the English Channel. One elip there, he thought, would mean a plunge to certolt death.
£1,000 Prize
But the temptation proved too tho First he nooded much. publlelly, to build up a business in Dying. Secend he needed the a British newspaper cash-and was offering £1,000 for the first man to fly the Channel,
In addition, he was intrigued by Latham's constant failuras, and wanted to seo. for himself it his efforts would be any more successful.
So on that overcast, misty Sunday morning in 1900 Bierlot was making his anal prepara- tlone in the little French village of Sangatte, few mites Calais.
from
Having asked the question Randolph proceeded to answer "There are three people,"
Dover, normally clearly visible, h delired, When Bleriot announced his "who might intentions, Latham was, more was just a vagus, grey blur on
determined than ever to be the, the horizon, 26 miles away, first man Across the Channel. He had risen early on that Ho might have succosted, bus morning of his historic fight, the for a grim jest of Fale. On the and a half-hour before sunrise
all-important morning he over- his hile mondplane made sleptt
zbort trial ran.
Sallofed with her behaviour, he walled until sunrise 4.25. 4.00.
pari.
by SIR BEVERLEY BAXTER, M.P.
I
Come
tho argument I
must remind
reasonably or un reasonably be supposed to aspiro bo
omeo Foreign They aro Mr Duncan Sandys (I a nu ɔ (ph's
from the editor's Minister of Labour), and RAB All that The Times Butler (the Home Secretary}," wanted to do was to prophesy that the Foreign Secretary would be given another appointment would not be
you that back in 1908 Lord boot. Indeed nothing could be brother-in-low), Iain Macleod
further Northcliffe, who had made dazzling if rather noisy success thoughts. with the Daily Mail staggered Fleet Street by buying The Times. But he could not straddle two such opposite worlds even where the strain though he acquired the axis- no heavy. tance of that remarkable young Canadian Campbell Stuart,
Northeilffe, however,
refused
To Be Fired
Crashed
Partly, it was Latham's own fault that he was beaten. Bleriot had offered to make No attempt until they were both ready.
The offer was
turned down.
But, sayo Randolph, all three of them are much too shrewd to believe that the Editor of The Times, if he were anxious to drive Lloyd out of the Foreign Often, would make the blunder of attacking the Foreign Secre-
that tary at the very moment he was attending the Conference | invention at Geneva. -
to be beaten, How could o powerful newspaper be more
In met The Times, is so full than the mai
it who owned
of aman Kindness that it
Therefore Randolph comes to especially if the owner was explains at length how gruelling
that someone newspaper genius like himself it is to be a Foreinn Secretary the concluzion No one could explain it, or at in modern times. Dld not Emie planted the whole idea on The any rate no one could convince Bevin die in Traness from the Times editor and that he the Northelle that The Timea mendurable sirain of the Editor, fell for it. newspaper had personality Foreign Officet Did not Str which was more powerful than Anthony Eden collapse after his any editor or owner.
years of wrestling with foreign affairs? And is it not
In short this newspaper was a fact that during Macmillon's Northcliffe's one great failure short term at the Foreign Office and the fallure was complete. Undoubtedly it hastened his dere aged appreciably?
A Mystery
bell
Well, that is all I can you just now. We are left with cline, his collapse and his death, "float yo!"' shouls The Times.
mystery that is beyond our to "A Prime Minister must not ask understanding. If The Times had So began the return Olympus. The Times, detached too much from his ministerial come out with a forthright de- the nolloy slave, In Mr Selwyn mand for the Foreign Secretary's from any affinity with
interests and or resignation that would have popular press, resumed its at Lloyd's own
beun understandable iltide of "We are not merely the sake of the service he can
silil give to the country and his though ineffective. a newspaper, we are o manent record of the arts, the party, a reasonable term must carrying of the selences and obove all be got to the
boden." politics,"
Impossible
In other words the Foreign Secretary was to be dred.
Now comes the final scene. The setting passes from The Time sloe to the House of Commons which had just re-
surged aftor the Whitsun
Recens.
even
But for The Times to use the heads "Prime Minister's Plan for Mr Selwyn Lloyd" when the "plan" consisted of nothing more than arguments for the dismissal of the Foreign Secretary-then the Old Thunderer has struck a blow not at Selwyn Lloyd but at itselt.
And what did it accomplish? Macmillan will never be able to diamies the Foreign Secretary even if he wanted to do so, for the simple reaBOX that there would be the outery that Mac- millan was taking ordem from Bir William Haley.
In Printing House Square where The Times is put to press each night it is almost inte possible for the editorial staff not to #GOLING on ale of superiority over other journalista who toll in the Street of Ink. For years The Times drama critic wore an elegant cape to every first night. Ar the foreign Correspondents they Macmillan has his own way walked and worked with the of doing things. He knew thot imprint of conscious súperiority, the Socialist M.P.'s would and And lest we forget, the editors some way of dragging The has become an immortal pro- undoubtedly turned out a news Times editorial into the boplay tected by a shield that no arrow paper of quality and character. of Question Time. And it was can picreo. The Times ~~~~~ Unhappity, however, there is even m. For example there carried him to the summit
a ghost that haunts the editorlat was a question on the order
In other words Solwyn Lloyd
har
the
Therefore let Robert Boothby, paper concerning the conference
promoted from spaces of The Times bulat Genova, so a Socialist Front Ently the ghost of the great Delane
of this 'strange under whose editorship The Bencher asked: "In view of the Comment to the Lords, opçok Times acquired the name of "The conference who was responsible, the epilogue
of Ink. statement in drama in the Street for the imspired Thunderer." To Delane worde
Selwyn Using the Sunday, Dispatch as were bullets, and life was an The Times that Mr
his platform be declared: endless battle. He supported or Lloyd was about to resign.""
"There has been no inspired opposed a cause with equal violence.
Not for him the soft statement," said Macmillan with cushion of compromise. He hity note in a voice, "But would have died of apoplexy if it does pertaps give me he had been alive to see The opportunity to Times fall into the possession of Northcliffe..
L
the
say that I have newspapers,
been reading the
as no doubt the gentleman op posite has been doing, and the hopo If I have dwell upon ile, pagi Foreign Serotary and with considerable ingin it is to carry on our work together because what I have described for a very long time to come." is an omental background, to Thera vein a terrifo cheer from what recently happened, Tiib, the Tory Bethes and even stody begins with "Ausry Timnolę” scuse.cheers from the Socialists. se it is wxametimes called, sud-
denly dochtig that it is not
Then up jumped Aneurin,
enough to criticise a minister of Bevan:
the Crown if hin, deserves it, but
fre must be told to go.
Which
brings us to the 'dramatic situm-
tion of the moment.
No 000 gan complain that The
"Is the Prime Ministër
asked, "that if
Times chowe a villion Utrk: Fætatutamasta” of this wore hid
·W victim "arben, tha
Editor of
"The mystery of The Times and Mr Selwyn Lloyd remains impenetrable. The `áltempted political assasination of the Foreign Socretary Erilai when he was ́in iho volödle of conducting International moro- Ciations as deßlento, difficul and crucial as any thai have faken place almon the waT WEKA. not omething to bo under taken lightly”.
And 20 saj ali of,
point of view From Bleriot's the crossing was the last phase in a lifetime of planning and of the quaint and tittle-trusted flying machines.
confidence lu Ho had superb the possibilitics of flight and spent long weary years perfeel- ing his idea of the best machine for the job-a lightweight mont- plane.
a
fle secured himself in the machina. The propeller whirred sata brisk action and the plane, sluggish at first, careered errati- cally along the tracay runway,
Newspapermen
Twenty yards... thirty ......... farty fifty-then the was airborne. Bleriot's attempt to Channel cross the English was under wat. News of his departure was radioed swiftly to England, and on the clits an excited knot at His expertinents were pain spectators craned anxiously aut staking and arduous, requiring to men, for the first glimpse of every ounce of the indomitable this aerial wonder
FOUR D. JONES
THE QUARD IS INFORMED OF Josett
| ARRIVAL, AT THE PAST,
THAT'S THE COD WGCOMHEY JUST SHINGS THROUGH,
THE PASS**
HOWDY MATI?[]
A BROAD BONNY MOONLIGHT NEHT
TONIGHT IS IT MOTUĆ
FERDINAND
BRICK BRADFORD
BRICK, ILL, BYART" WORK ON A NEW REMOTE- CONTROL ORVICE PRAHAPE
I CAN RECOVER THE
TAE-TOP!
LOOK OVE
GRÁCERIP)
STRANGE PRODUSE THESE SPANIARDI
| AUWELL, PEKELY
ANKOSZYKÉ
SCAN THE LAND -
SCAPE IN SEARCH
Below, the harsh stutter But the spectators were low
of French-fashion, on both checks, in number. There was little his engine, as he approached the Then everyone wanted to com- faith that Bleriot would be any coast, caused a solitary police gratulate him. more successful than the cránka, mùn to look up, blink-and· Again and again he had to re-
look again.
peat the story of his trip to the who had preceded him
Even the journalists who had Seconds later he was over eager crowds who thronged been posted to Daver for Just Englare The Channel had been around him, but he had little to such a fight were caught un- crossed. But only a few soldiers, say, his flight wne so snoventaill
or two scattered civilians awares stlit sleeping in their one
He was driven in slats to cosy hotel rooms,
Bieriot's wito and a handful of
Dover and totod That day he was not friends saw this historie moment crownod "king" in Eng- Meanwhile, Bleriot having an cány time. He had of tritanph,
land, in his nalivo Franco, atid, In his plans Bieriot was indeed, throughout the world, no compass to guide his craft -
excited that he cut out the The thumpy, the middle-aged and only his Own urther of
engins ∙shtich direction kept him on the right
too #don. Fretaliian had reached his goal. Instead of sučing' gynoefully · From" Dover he was taken next course to England.
to earth his plans, dropped dry to London, where the mul like a stone.
tules Rocked to greet and cheer bina through the crowded streets.
The whole of England,
Then the winds, which for the Arat part of the journey had been non-existent, gradually built up in force.
Ecstatic Welcome seed, toed out to do honour
Once
to Bleriot:
After that wonderful das of Dieplat did little dying he had amazing fuck far tried his enough. Not until 20 years later did he team just how lucky hla memorable crossing had been.
Hin fragile machine WAD tomed and buffetod ka. »
found more. Bleriot helpless cork in mid-ootân. The plane plummeted sca; himself digging his way out
Urgently he bumped wreakage, wards.
though the plane the was not too more petrol through
badly damaged engine, and she scured This no the joy of the occa
slon was too great for the con- The moment of danger was queror to worry about ruch ever. Jubilantly he waved to a minor problems. passing destroyer, soon out of
He was greeted ecstatically sight. Minutes later he was in welcome sight of land once by his colleague and compatriol
Iclased Fontaine, who
obediently up again.
moro.
IT'S HIN 117E HERE
AT LASTS X
QUIK PREPEL THE FOOT EATH CONSTABLE-HE'S
GOT THE OIL THROUGH
OFFERS
by MADDOCKS
him,
Bleriot's Biglit had taken him 37 máufen." The engine he used had never run long befotowand nozio of Re type over *an
long agola.....
+
ACOMIN THE VAKS ARE IN
NEW
Lody Sheaffer
POLITAN FOR
· Fréer kutoro- fountai PER la Express JOUP FONDKIA) Laste in Bos Jewelry, Dievas. to hear an ink bocile...
drop-in enstríðum of Bartys writing Quick,
mingvers LYMITED PAPER COSTIN
By Mik
rtist's prefer
APEY MOUSE LATER, BUICK, PU ÁÑO DE „JANUARY ARKIYR AT THE PROJECT AREA WHERE THE NEW BLAGEY RO BROVO YERZP
(HILLES DOCTORU,
H&PAM
By Paul Norris
BRICK, THIS IS MAJOR CHISWICK BOSH;
HR S QUR CHIEN TESTLA PILOT ON THE MARTHATS
ERATION "BOOK-AND-
SWISSAIR
THE AIRLINE OF SWITZERLAND.
San Miguel
the
PREMIUM