THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY;; AUGUST 29, 1959.
Oh, How They Love This Never-Never Land
LOVE AT ALL AGES, Angela
Thirkell. Hamish Homil- ton. 151.
THEY hurry
T
home
By HAROLD HARRIS
their
from the circulating
The middle class, are near the 1,300,000 mork in libraries,
houses," ferl the
World "commodlous elderly Britial editions alone.
to Providence' well-bred ladies, clutch-ales bring the figure to nearly very grateful
for being placed where 2,000,000).
they "nerd fear no tall, nor be proud ing the precious volume.
about anything in particular." Lights burn late these nights in the bedrooms of private hotels in the Cromwell Road.
A great sigh of content goes up from S.W.7. The new Mrs Thirkeli is out.
Angela Thirkell, daughter of
etossich J W. Markail, the scholar, granddaughter of Burne Jones, the pre-Raphaelite paint- er, cousin of Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling, was when she published her Arst book. Now she is rising 70.
40
For 30 years crities have been making fun of the snobbishness in her novels. For 30 years her sales have been rising, until they
Mrs Thirkell, who lives in a writes only house In Chelsea, 1er 30th about the country. Barsetshice novel la set, like the other 28,
country.
in
the
Trollope
In villages with names lice High Rising, Winter Overcotes, ilver Lille Misot, everyone contentedly in the sphere tu which birth has allotted them.
The hard-working aristocrats, best furniture removing their and paintings to elegant smaller make over their mansions, hideous great houses to businerA syndicates for exploitation at 29. Od. a visit,
And woe belde any seum or louts from the town who don't Into the behave themselves! basha with them!
How a little
RUDOLF HUESS
man
turns
killer
by JOHN CONNELL
COMMANDANT OF AUSCHWITZ. By Rudolf Hooss.
Weldenfeld and Nicolson. 25s.
CONSCIENTIOUS diligent, so scrupulous about
Co
matters of detail that he tends to fuss a little. Impeccably honest on all points of finance and administration, punctual, loyal, not particularly imaginative.
Thus, suspeel. would soine crai who landed himself in a ruperior officer have written bis difficult and responsible job, ForGelential repart nn S.S. which to his pained surprise, Haupsturmfuhrer Rudol Franz led to his being regarded, by Ferdinand loss, when any the world outside the Third question arose of his promotion Helch, as a blood-thirsty beact, within the somewhat complex a cruel sadist and a mass mur- cffeial hierarchy of the Third derer. Reich.
Killed 2,000,000
'Not evil'
Forlornly he complains that
But the possessor of these the world will not understand admirable virtues (and there that "he too, had a heart and
ho was not evil,
can be
doubt that no possessed them all, in large
measure) ulso signed, in March
1040,
I believe it to be essential voluntary statement that, however difficult it may all do understanl
before two officers of the War appear, we Crimes Investigation Unit of just this. I do not mean that BAOR-a, statement which, at we should forget the enormity his subsequent trial, was proved of Hoess's crime, but that wo up to the hil
should try to comprehend ita crigin and its meaning.
It read:
personally
I say this with all the more arranged on orders received from 1mmler in May 1941, the urgency because, with only a Hossing of 2,000,000 persons alight change la heredity and between June-July 1941 and environment my wife and my the end of 1943, during whieh stepson would have been among time I way Commandant of the two man who, under Auschwitz."
Hoess's supervision, were herded
This book
of the trains, arrangea in Is his auto- orderly ranks, stripped naked blography which he wrotein and ushered into the gas cham prison in Cracow in 1946-47 bers. while awaiting his trial and exceution. In Mr Constantina
FitzGibbon's sober and, I sus pect, well-high teral trans- lation, it is a document of terrible, absorbing fascination.
Loved animals
A twinge
stepson had his third
The gulf
MRS. ANGELA-THIRKELL'
some etiquette loka",next Ume they meet. "We've got Burke
WHEN CARUSO SAT ON
A SUITCASE
and Debreit," Says Lavinia, wasn't every day the greatest tenor in the world came to town. All
whose father is only a QC, and a Sir. "Father gets new coples quite often."
!
AL
series of -. ∙an endless While they are privileged to luncheon and dinner parties rub shoulders with aristocrats ("Crepes Suzette and/or lee from time to time, their security cream were handed at this stage la guarinteed by the unbridge by one of the many helpers able gulf which separates them from the vlinge who Were: from the Lower Orders.
always available for partles") everyone talks and talks about anything that Thirkell's mind.
comes to Mrs
It might be good manners, or where to put the stress in "con- is dealt with troversy (this three times, twice on the same The author Interpolates page). her own comments in the first person plural,
opera-loving San Francisco turned out in its best finery for the occasion. As the fabulous Caruso finished singing Carmen's Don Jose applause roared like thunder to the rafters of the gaudy, glittering Opera House.
Newsmen squeezed through the audience to get to their offices, Around 6 năm. Barrett, editor of the Examiner, pushed back his green eye- shade. The paper, with the Caruso story in it, had long since been put to bed. Barrett started home to his bed too.
Out on the deserted street in the grey dawn, he was telling a joke to one of his reporters,
It was a joke whose tagline never got told.
For, suddenly, at 12 minutes past five on that April morning
Three-foot high earth waves Some tragedies have, a quality of mystique and a degree of rippled under the ground's sur- Imagination-appeni that makes tare, undulating as caslly as the on the nearby Pacific. them legende, Liko Pompeit, surf liko Custer's Last Stand, and Spires snapped off churches as like London's blitz, the 1000 Ban, crisply as asparagus tips. Francisco earthquake la one of
'In the sumptuous Palace them.
Hotel, the great Caruso-well pleased by his evening's success --Was fast asleep.
By
DEE WELLS
His fear quieted, he rushed Into the middle of the street. sat down on a suitcase and re- fused, to budge. The famous ainger, widewayed in his dress- ing-gown, was one of the city's ' Eights that morning.
The horror
But disaster's inevitable com- panlon is tragedy. The follow ing scene is only one of thou- sonds that were caused by those.. 55 conds of horror.
A man had rooled back dead-drunk to his lodging house. Only gradually and groggily did he come awake when the carth
The Lower Orders have funny names (Welk, the underlaker, old Nannie Twicker) and funny way of talking:
"I rather like a ganper And occasionally myself.... now, my lady, we must have a nico shut-eye" (Slater Chifinch,
1900, the wrath of all hell the monthly nurse); "Pleased
broke 300se in San Francisco. meetcher, yelled Eme Bunce,"
On the ducal level, we walch Lady Gwendolina Willlains,
Under the nowanen's feet the
shook. Mrs Moreland, the gifted pavement ugled and trembled middle-aged daughter of the
who lives at High the jelly. With a
sickening Towers novelist" Dowager Duchess of
street buckled and (irreverently known as Dow) as Rising, is by a coincidence also heave the
the Rev, working on her 30th novel in split wide open.
Love At All Ages. "They are all exactly like each other," she boasts "and I cart never remember which is which."
than 20 of Me More Thirkell's 30 are always in print great quarry of nostalgia for the Indies of S.W.7, who Can look back with sighs of regret and smiles of pleasure at world that never existed,
My birthday about the time Hoess fook up his duties; he had bright gold hair and blue eyes.
she courts and weds Caleb Oridi.
There are no marquesses. But there le an enrl. whose son, Lord Mellings (known as Ludo) displays the first symptoms
of
I am zure that Commandant Hoess was the most ordinary Hoess would have had quite a at the of ordinary little men..a born twinge of depression minor bureaucrat. His family thought of ending such life was exemplary, he lovet bonny tle boy to his death; nimals, and in his job he pi- but after all he was obeying ways knew the regulations be crders, entrying out the regu-
lations.
heart,
With a slight change of in- heritance and environment you can imagine him performing his dules just as zealously, not in Hitler's "Anal solution of the Jewish problem" but In the rationing of sweets or the Issue of planning permits,
affection for 10-year-old Lavinia. This is destined for development in the 31st Thirkell. Meanwhile, they sing Victorian ballads together.
Their idyll ends temporarily arrangement to "have
The twinge Hoes admitted to feeling It quite often-was tuch as a farmer might have if a young rabbit crawled out
t burrow, and at his feet died of myxomatosis.
of
or on
In a passage of especial sig- nificance Hoes, having dwelt on the delights and anxieties of family life, and the contrast which they afforded to his daily round at the camp, observed; "I
For the final solution," how. ever evil and demenied the black hearts of those who devised it, ang carried out by many careful, conscientious little bureaucrate was no longer happy in Ausch-
right along the line from arrest to the closing of the doors of the ges-chamber whose complete exculpation in their own vow
wir once the mass extermina- tions had begun.” -
Pear, miserable little mouse
et a mún, cog in a gigantic sys- was "We only obeyed orders." tem, at once dreadfully powerful;
Hoess explains how, from and judlerously unimportant. childhoot upwards, he wits a model citizen of a well-orgo- boy who need national socialist. Slate good disciplined obeyed orders and loved and and the ultimate embodiment served the Fatherland. He of the grey, facpless evil widch gives a detalled account of hi has swept over Europe in the not very meteorly rise in the past half-century.
Nazi Party and then within the What was, there to do with He fatters limit that he him, when he was caught, ax
cept destroy him--as he had-
3.9.
was a soldier of the Third Reich; he wasn't, of course; he Was Just a dreary, little bureau
destroyed two million others?
mellendus Kaprets dervice),,
-(London Express Service).
JACKY'S DIARY
BY
The two men were flung to the ground while, above them, tall buildings dit a CTAZY grotesque dašice,
Fran-
EARTHQUAKE! Son cisco has always been plagued by them, But this one, and the even more devastating fire that followed in, reached dimensions that even San Francisco could never have Imagined.
"WELL I'M STILL here in Summer Camp, BOY there sure is LOTS of Things to Do Up Here! Like Last Week Uncle Fred TOOK US ON a Hike in The Woods, So we COULD LOOK AT THE BEAUTY-FULL
JACKY MENDELSOHN Scenery.
AGE 3/2
Only there wasn't aNY. ALL THEY had was A Bunch of Trees Lakes & MOUNTAINS
Stuff WhAT & GYP?”
Fooey
Now there's a book (THE SAN FRANCISCO DISASTER. and Rolliff, 103.) by Barris British writer Monica Suther- land that fills in the gaps in the legend.
The Brst terrible upheaval lasted 30 seconds. Then, all over the city, people believed it was finished and to inspect the damage.
swarmed out
Like applause.
In his dreams, the deafening Tumble must have sounded like
He squinted hard when, ‘over the ultimate in applause, Bui when the heaven-sent applause his bed, the celling shifted and When a throw him from his bed he was split in jagged cracks. gripped by panic. As he child's leg slipped down into one clutched the teetering wall his of the cracks, he watched it un- Arst thought was for his voice, believingly. Had this rutie awakening affected it?
Then the ceiling lurched back and the crack clased on the
18
For
He took a deep breath, lean- child's ankle like giant scissors. ed from his window and let
tragic con loose the powerful, shimmering sequences, the earthquake was again voice over the scene of devasta- merely a preamble to the larger more than below, His voice was per- disaster that now occurred.
Ten seconds later the devilish thundering noise began and swelled to an even deatening crescendo,
fectly all right.
Sinntry
The NEXT DAY I WENT on A Horse-Back Ride. Only no Daddies are Aloud up here, so they gotta Use A Real Horse instead,
REAL HORSE BACK Ride
FAKE HORSE BACK RIDE
Up here they also got Better Sicknesses You Can Catch, 1959, EFAs Site, 1ns World rights reserved.
Bike for instants in the City You only can Get maybe a Skimmed knee, But here you also can get Poison ivory, SUNBURNT SMAKe-Bit, f Drowned, which can keep You Out of School for A Long Time.
city
*
Luck! CAMP
Kid.
2
At night Some Times we sit around in A Camp- Fire & Uncle Fred TELLS US Spooky Ghost | Stories That gives us Ghost-Pimples
aber Mommy Daddy won't even Reckonize me when GET HOME, On A COUNT of om Brown As a Berry, BRowNer Even, Cause at Break- fast one kid SPILLED A Jar of BERRies all over His self, and ↑ Ran OVER of STOOD NEXT To him & STILL:
7-26
More Browner Then Him,
WRITE
is
my Last
That's all . got Time”; now ON A COUNT of This; up of Enjoy my self Quick&
week in Camp, so a Golía Hurry.
MY ADATY
FIRE! Immediately following the quake, fires broke out everywhere and ilcked ,up houses like kindling wood. Glas poured from snapped pipea Boon whole streets мета avenues of leaping flame that left. gutted rums behind 'ng the fires ; Spread beyond control.
Moreover, the city was as powerless to fight the spread-, ing flames as it had been to stop. the earthquake.
Although its fire department, was one of the biggest in the country, the firemen were un- able to check the fire,. For one, simple reason: They had no water.
The mains had cracked wide open.
The lasses
Firemen could do nothing but dynamite bulldings in the fire's paih until the dynamite ian out too.
For three solld days the Bres. raged. The city was all but cut` off from the world. -- To prótáct what private property was left the order went out that looters be shot on sight.
were
h
It was days before even so much as a telegram could get in or out of the elly, When things started functioning again - the Red Cross moved in to tend the homeless people, And San.. Francisco dazedly felted 'up 118 losses.
They were enormous. Over four square milea had been
Burned out.
The death toll itself was not. as bad as one might expert--- even the highest estimate placed it well under 1.000. But 28,000 houses fond been destroyed. The hollish fire totted the damage up to well Cover $400 million.
From Chinatown to City Hal America'a the biggest elty on West Coast had been all but/ destroyed But, bravely, it pleted itsalt tip out of the smouldering ashes. Swiftly it was replanned and rebuilt.";
San Francisco's reputation changed too. Almost overnight the riotous. Barbary, Const," once, A sailor's paradise of bars and brothels, became a sober, hard- working port.
Forgotten
Today San Francisco is handsome, modem, thriving bort, whose Golden Gate bridge spans nearly a mile of 'bay) and is the largest in the worldy
There are old-timers who remember the night Caruso song Don Jose. There are even moro who remember the Great Fire. But there' aren't too many who remember the earth- quake,.
It's a very curious thing. But, San Franciscans don't remember the earthquake. They don't, because they don't want to They don't like to be reminded that their handsama" city ́is. 11 "Earthquake Country. That, at any moment, the solid earth coa rumble and shatter, their homes' and their lives.
So San Franciaco - builds its skyscrapera earthquako "proof. But if novor prové, so. VAña U. you walk through is pubile. buildings today you will seo 'many a proud notion that bonda This Building a Fireproof.TMIC you mention the earthquake, It's another storylin
"Earthquake7}||||||Whip:earth- quake?? they ask, “Nova, bava those around here,"
(London Express › Berwick),