THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1980.
A noted China Mail writer takes a penetrating look at the dying year,
accomplishments and lists its findings....
GOODBYE TO
So it is goodbye to 1960 and hail to the new-born infant 1961. In millions of homos tonight there will be the heart-warming salutation "Happy New Year!”
It is, of course, an over-simplification. No year can be happy or unhappy for twelve months at a time, nor was mankind given courage and faith unless both were essential in dealing with the problems of today and tomorrow. However, common decency requires that we should look at the dying year before we turn to its successor. Was it a good year or a bad one? Did civilisation move forward or slide back-
assesses its
1960-HELLO 1961!
that
Is there a living_force
transcends our world?'
-LONDON LETTER-
by Sir Beverley Baxter, M.P.
Europe are amalgamaling Industrially in the Common Market und the Outer Seven.
wards? Are we advancing or are we stumbl Let us admit that there are difficulties in these huge amalgama- ing through the mists to a destination that is not marked on any map?
It easy to pose such questions but it in difcult to and the However, let us look at the dying year and sưC what we can find to its credit.
KNEWCTF,
It may have been no more than Jiating a candle in a darkening world but I commend to the full the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vallean. Why should there be a stone wall between the Catholio and the Protestant churches?
Pray for Peace'
To me it recalled the visit of Prime Minister
Chamberinin to Rome in 1939 when I went along to see what was happening. That long talk then with Cardinal Pacelli, (later he became the Pope who held the post of Foreign Minister within Vatican.
Here was a man of nesthetic body and mind, and our conversation wwe doubly interesting because the mud combination of Mus- solini and Hitler was threatening disaster to the civillaedi world.
In perfect English and with a complete blending of mind and the spirit be painted in words the dark clouds of threatened war. When the long interview was over he made the sign of the Cross and snid: bless you and your family. I bless your" country of Great Britain. My son, pray for peace." When Chainberlain drove through the streets of Rome in an open motorear the grent crowds cheered the whole way. More than that they reached out their bands as though in supplica- tion that there should be no war. But the strutting pudgy Italian dictator had loosed the hounds of war and he could not call them back, Dictators sellom die in their bein, Hitler took his own life and his body was consumed in the flames of hell. Trotsky wan murdered, and the Italian mob killed Musollas and hung his The answer is that
dead body by the feet like a carcass outside a butcher's shop, Yes--but what is happening today in Russia?
a great deal is happening. Not very long ago I had a chat at
Westminster with it clever left wing agitator who is a com- plote Communist and makes no pretence to be otherwise,
"Khrushchev," he said, "Is as out of date as the dodo. He tries to pretend that he is an all-powerful dietator but ho knows in his heart that he cannot avoid the counter-revolution.
"When will that be?" I asked.
'He lives in terror'
"When?" "he anid. "It's going on all the time. The industrial re-
volution is taking place now just as it did in Britain in the 19th century. There Russian industrialisis look upon Kurushi.
chev on a blastering nuisance."
Then he finished with these words: "Khrushchev lives in terror of two rallons-America and China. The teaning millions of Chins must have more territory to maintain their expanding population-and the only terrllory available is Siberin.” "Then you do not rule out the possibility of Chinese-Russian
warnaked.
4
"It is a certainty," said my strange friend.
If that picture is true then Russia foves an antagonistie, or at any
rate, disapproving America plus the menace of a land-starved China,
powerful
tions, and above all Great Britain has to try to rido two horses at once. How can Britain maintain Imperial preference and nt the same time leave herself open to the industrialista and egriculturisis of Western Europe?
Harold Macmillan goes to bed with that problem every night--and In the morning the problem is still there. Yet range as it may suem there is good will on both sides. Truly we can say that civilisation is on the murch when feuding nations such as Britain, France, Italy and West Germany sit down to discuss a means of partnership rather than rivalry.
But what about fist ginnt on the other side of the Atlantjo
Ocean? What about the United States of America? For years and decades on end the U.S.A. clung to the dream of Isolation and really belleved that the Atlantic and Pacife Oceans were an irresistible defence, Today there is no such
thing ba distance. Oceans have become ponds, and moun- tans have become tiny playthings in a child's nursery,
In other words we live in one world, a world which has shrunk
to a size which has annihilated distance. Allow me to digress for a moment and come with me to a_con- ference that was held the other week in Westminster Hall- which is part of the Houses of Parlament.
On
As
Marauders of the skies
the platform wore half
dozen ♫
leading scientista who are planning do land on the moon and other planels. What were they like, these marauders of the skies? To me they looked just like any constituents gathered together for a whist drive. They talked of incredible things in plain langu- nge and looked as if they would be glad to adjourn for the tea which we had promised them.
they spoke of space my mind went bael: to school deur when I was fascinated by the definition of space as that linkless element of which any given point is the centre, Are there other worlds than the one we know? If the sun is a flaming planet will it burn itself out in another few thou- the sand years or so? Is there life on the moon in addition to the man whose features wo clearly see on a cloudless night? Again I can only use the trite confession of the Gallup survey
and answer: "Don't know."
LOGORLAY
THE mosaic that is
Cairo looks much the same, at first, as it always did. Multi-colour- ed, glittering, chipped and faded in parts: a pattern to stimulate the eye and Bome of the other senses.
But take a closer look and the 1960 pattern is different. Some of the chips have been filled in. Other, bigger ones have appeared.
President Gamal Nasser
h.19
been trying to make his own bold Chauvinistic pattern, strict ly in the colours of the United Arab Republic.
takça and
He has added
away. Mostly taken away. And
Behind
the dazzling delta of
Nasser's smile
Farouk's family and a frequent want to be visitor to his palaces.
Now she is Madame Gonul
Kordag, hard-working owner of haute couture salmi in Cairo.
STRIPPED
he has hammered away at the human frieze, He is still doing with his fanatic's hammer. Here is the 1900 mosaic as I have found it, As though to add to the troubles of the tubby Russian dictator he First, a decorative part of the
sees the growing process of commercial partnership in | frieze. Before the new regime Then the new regime come Western Europe." For centuries Europe supplied the terri- sne was Princess Kurhan, and stripped us of everything. ~tory for dictators to launch their wars. Today the nations of Į married to a member of King All our money and property,
SAILING FEBRUARY 12
TO SAN FRANCISCO
She told me: "In Farouk's time life was easy. Perhaps toe easy.
an
idle princess
I con
again.
"But I do not think
go on living here much longer. The regime mukes things too difficult.
I am looking for a country where there are no polities, no restrictions, no fears,
The ex-princess is looking. with only a slight flicker of
in hope
brown eyes. ...
But the final effect such a syndicated smile infinitely depressing.
her pretty I
A matter of
propaganda
of
is
In all seriousness there comes a moment when the supernatural I the only rationsi explanation of the universe. The scientists way that mankind was a development of the soil and the warmth of the sun but when was the call created and what was the sun before it developed into overlasting Aome? Truly it is born upon us that in the beginning was "God. There is no other explanation no matter how ardently the scientide mind claims that there is an explanation of everything. You might as well contend that the genius of Wagner's musio come from the tinking piano in his studio. "In the beginning. Those are the words which leavea selenco dumb,
Genius without frontiers
There is no explanation, for Shakespeare who had practically no education yet write plays of stich, beauty and tragedy that the whole world seeläbnis: "This is a mon whose genius had 110 frontiers)''
In our own time we saw a man named Winston Churchill, rise to such powers of expression that his words were more deadly than the bombs which rained night after night on Berlin. And so it was with Abraham Lincoln who led his country into civil war because he insisted that you cannot have a nation half-slave, half-free,
In the unknown world of the stars there may be a livlig force that for transcends the world we know. Because Christ was the Son of God we have the right to believe that there in human life in the islands of space, Dint there will be poet and selenists and dreamers, and supreme realiaty just as there are in the planet we know.
In the meantime our friends, the relentlats, who came to talk at Westminster are paying their modest Income tax, taking their wives to the cinema, voting Conservative or Labour at the elections, but dreaming of the day when they will land on the moon and gaze far below at a tiny star which we call the world in which wo live.
And now as luncheon has been announced by my wife I shall leave the fanciful and return to the foolual where everything can be explained except how the world began....
Next day the
official Cairo
radio broadcast a violent attock on King Hussein.
I doubt if it was invited by
his Government,
The ghost
of Samson “AIRO, thơ city which has horo superstitions thon sowort, Dia anxiously awaiting ghostly, nows from the Gaza Strip.
Property- but no owners DRITISH
BR
sands
and
property goods worth thou-
of pounds which wore Requestored at tho time of Suck are still lying unclaimed here.
Coll Crowe, who has had the thorny and sometimes humilia- ting fark of heading the British mission since we resined officin!
Some of the quarter-million relations a year ago, told me:- Arab refugees populating this "The stuff has been desequea- narrow Biblical cousine claim tered for some time, and we to hove
the ghost of have done all we can to traco 'Samson
from
the owners. But it is not easy. emerging
the mausoleum one hit above Gaza There are many houses and The British unclaimed, City, where he is supposed to data have been buried.
Embassy is packed with owner- They say that they have heard less furniture and there aro strange rumblag nelsos from many cars rusting away in tho within the ancient mausoleum at grounds. I wish we could get rid
of them." night.
Dolllahs have been appointed He did not offer me a house -local girls who patrol the hill- or a car. side hoping to lure Samson Into the open.
Dr
proach.
But they report that he con- a talk with HAD
temptuously turns his back and Abdul Kader Hatom, disappears whenever they op- Minister of Stato and Chief of Propaganda.
They arc decidedly dis- Sitting in an office decorated appointed Dollahs.
at least three smiling OFFICIAL published
even the furniture from the EVERY office, every room, apartment, and my jewellery,
restaurant,
every
every
coat and some of my clothes.
with
me:-
Clean-up
camgaign
INCE Nasser took power he has been running
a campaign, to clean up.
"They let me just one to night club, every hotel photographs of Nasser, ho told statistic: Egypt built 270 Cairo, which used to be the
im
most licentious city in the world—including London.
"King Hussein of Jordan and schools last year. "They told my husband: You foyer carries on its walls have nothing left so you migļit
iTe
• photograph of President his Government
sending Unofficial, unpublished
He has banished nudos from 13 well go. He is now
agents into the United Arab Nasser.
Republic and trying to sabotage fact: the illiteracy rate in the cabarets and "filthy post- Turkey, whore I was born.
cards" from the bookstalls. "But I refused 10 go. 1 knew The same photograph in 2. They pour out propaganda Egypt is still 70 per cent:
He has even chased away tho something about dress design- the same smiling pose against us all the time.
Official, published statis- Ing, so I started my business. the black moustache fram
touts who used to roam the factories were streets offering strange diver i had 10 make money somehow.
tic: 117 opened last year in Egypt. cions and appointments with
Unofficial, unpublished their sisters. fact: the averago income
Now, they are operating di- creetly in the bars. is still HK$530 a year.
-London Expraat Service.)
"It was not easy at first, but ing the gleaming teeth. It now I have 13 girls working for is meant to be a confident, me and I am quite successful...
as successful as I can be here. reassuring smile. A dazzi
I never ing delta of a smile.
"I enjoy
working.
THE
WEEKEND
GAMBOLS
A WONDERFUL
MEAL, BAYE
NOW TO GET DOWN TO BUSINESS
WE
"But for four month have not replied. Not a word have we said against him,
"We do not wish to interfere in the affairs of other States unless invited by their Govern- mente, and people."
by Barris Appleby
I'M SURE YOU TWO MEN WOULD
UKE TO GO SOMEWHERE AND TALK UNDISTURBED
S.S. President Wilson
PICK YOUR SAILING DATE AND BOOK PASSAGE NOW! Sail away from your cares aboard a great American President Liner, choice of connoisseurs throughout the Orient. Swimming, deck sports, games, dancing parties, movies—this splendid ship offers you every pleasure afloat. Air-conditioned accommodations, superb food, and service to meet the most discriminating standards. First-class fares from US$625.
See your Travel Agent Now.
SPACE AVAILABLE ON THESE SAILINGS
SS PRESIDENT WILSON
SS PRESIDENT HOOVER
SS PRESIDENT CLEVELAND
SS PRESIDENT WILSON
FEBRUARY 12
FEBRUARY 25
MARCH G
MARCH APRIL
30
11
SS PRESIDENT HOOVER
AMERICAN PRESIDENT LINES
I'LL HAVE To BATH AND CHANGE