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THE CHINA MAIL. MONDAY, MARCH 6, 1961.
THIS FATHER COMPELS ME TO ASK THIS QUESTION...
How often do you put an outsider first before yourself and family?
I PICKED up a book which opened a door in my memory. I thought of a time-just after the war. A young man stood upon the threshold of my London home. He was shy and diffident, delicate-looking with very thin wrists.
I noticed his wrists particular-
ly, because the young man was
a boinber pllat, une of the mast famous the conület had thrown up, one of the very few to win the highest accolade for courage.
Gron Captain Cheshire, V.C.. having refused a pennanent commission is the R.A.F., was
the
by GODFREY WINN
**JE WAR three days after back in Clevy Street, and he had Hiroshima happened. We were eone in ask my advice.
39.000ft. up, and 30 miles from
the target when
bomb dropped. We had been warned to wear dark glasses, but even 50. It was like a million naked electric light bulbs being pressed down agalusi our eyeballs.
The bomb
He wanted to be a writer. Because of his name ON A winged here he had been given
a platform in a Sunday paper. How should he l the space allotted to him each werk?
I paid. "What matters must is tire
of communicntion.
power
What do you want to com- municate? Your war periences?"
ex-
"I now know what the words Hell on earth really mean. It has made me detest war and anything to do with war for the rest of my life. I wan!...."
Revolt
And then he stopped, because He sat forward in his chair, - he still did not know exactly his wrists hanging out of the what he wanted. He only knew jacket of his neat blue anony that he was sick of death and mous suit,
destruction, he was in revolt this....
against all the negative forces let loose in the world.
al answered
like
"The very war that happened to me was that I was sent us an official observer on the final obliteration bombing mission at Nagasaki.
last thing in the
I urged him to say all that he felt in his column.
Whereupon the stranger who had rung my bell thanked me politely and went on his way.
Since that day early 15 years ago. I have watched his progress from ofar.
You will not feel like that when you have finished reading this testament. What struck me so much about it was that excuses nothing: the muddles at, first, the acar disasters in starting communities, trying to Hve by the principle where everything is shared.
These failures. Inevitably. showed up all the faults of man- kind. Enough to make a saint despair. But this pilgrim never gave up.
For instance, at Le Court, the Now that I have read Leonard
huge estale that he and his Cheshire's new book, I feel ashamed that having participated band of volunteers took over as in the beginning of the metamnt-retreat for the aged and the chronically sick, Cheshire did phosis. I was too preoccupied not alt In Art office, glving with my own efforts ot self-
orders, writing letters, asking for realisation to take a more active subscriptions and help. No, he shore in his,
scrubbed the floors himself and served interminable hours as an unpaid nursing orderly.
Despair
For, make no mistake, the fare ing face for him. Many times he has found himself utterly alone, many times close to despair.
There was, for example, the arrival of Granny. The alt-
she wants
NOW WHAT IS
PETER CHAMBERS
UP TO TODAY?
Swordstick
on approval!
IT BEGINS with that James Bond 'feeling in Pall Mall, moves on to overtime in Turnham Green, swashbuckling in Soho and legal niceties in Chelsea. In fact it's
a decidedly different China Mail column.
TAP, tap, tap goes my walking-stick as I return
I
home at a late hour. What a friendly sound!
imagine my neighbours
murmuring behind drawn cur- Cyrenalea, and assorted ambas- tains: "That person Chambers-sadors
to the
Court of St he must have hurt his poor leg. James's, He's using a waiking-stick.".
"Two hundred
years Neighbours, you have been about the time this firm, was of victory has not been a smil-lance driver confided: "She's grossly deceived. It is awordstick, founded, everybody who was wore a sword," sald practically stone deaf, except I could cut you all into chump anybody
"Now, of when
One tug at the handle Jimmy Clayton. something chops. special, she can't do a thing for and out of that simple-seeming cource. mwords are mainly herself....and she's very parti-Malacca cane 1 unsheath 20 ceremonial but we still make cular about her food. But once inches of cold steel,
the real, killing article." you get the hang of it, it won't
It's rare old Victorian be too bad."
What
beautiful A
blade! Mr Clayton small dark presses. Needle-sharp, finely tempered, North Londoner
of peaceable bedlam. The disciple did his best...
and etched down the blood-gut appearance, has spent all his and on the fifteenth day there
"This shop hasn't changed all with the sort of arabesque pat- life in swords. He started as unexpected terns you find sudden.
on Adam fre-
an apprentice at 18, fing down the 40 years I've been here," development. At lunchtline, as
said Mr Rouse, costing an eye places,
the gilt filings for scabbards. he handed her a bowl of milk
then pudding. Granny Bung her arms round
A
We are, of course, all pilgrims, seeking the same way home, but for him. the post-war part of "Be completely honest, not that pilgrimage started in only with the public but with night club called The Vanily true Fals. the only yourself. It is way. It does not matter about published your erary style. You will be
read."
• "The Face of Victory," by Leonard Chashire,
by Hutchinson's 10.
THAT MONDAY
MORNING
I'M
FEELING...
Do you suffer from negative-ion starvation?
M a sucker for science. Nylons, yes. Sputniks, yes. Infra-red grills and colour TV and hover- craft and atom power stations and non-drip paint and rows about how the universe began, yes.
But it's now time to cali a halt; now, this very Monday morning.
They've started to undermine
Ventilation Research Associa-
our Monday morning feeling. with negative or positive ions They, this time, are the will be asked how they feel. Exports of the Heating and
Leave it be, Mr Stanley. Slow down.
This is where I get off. tion at Bracknell, Berkshire. First of all, dan't believe Respectable, serious, down-to- the theory, because I can get a earth men, you'd think, used to Monday-morning fealing
dealing with plumbers and day of the weak.
xetting rid of draughts; the
last people you'd suspect of
such a trick:
But their head physicist, Mr
Erie Stanley, suspects that we
get that Monday morning feel-
VIRTUE
any
And bless the guileless boffine
ing because we suffer from of Bracknell, I like it.
negative-lon starvation (lon, no! Maybe they never come into iron) and hopes he can put I their laboratory, snarling, brow
right.
SLOW DOWN
like 4 thundercloud, and feel the joy of gradually warming up to life. Maybe their dayd
sony-alled
are one long. So heave-ho for
fyll (with a the H2O and one to more for
Tons are bits of atoms carry the 12904),
many
ing tiny electrient charges. Horrible! Without a few talid positive or negative, They come downs like a Monday morning atting out of ventilation feeling life would never have systems, It seems,
any ups. There have been experiments Without my Monday morning
[celings suggesting that too
my colleagues would positive lons leave you feeling have no chance to exercise the slow, dull-in fact, Üke a wel virtues of sympathy, forbear4 Monday morning and that. ance, and understanding. (And negative ions produce a feeling without their Monday morning
***** feelings neither would.1). of "exhilaration
We'd none of us have The mag is that the negative excuse for a fit harmless bad ches get pluck on the wall, losing temper. We wouldn't be hi their negative chart, and leaving the baleful positive ones any more..
circling around the room waiting
to strike. An office building empty over the weekend wi have accentuated the positive and eliminated the negative.
Mir Stanley is planning experi ments in which people dosed
Thomas
Hellyer
ang
-(Londoli Express Žaroles),
Simple?
was C
It costs £12 10s, and I have It "en appro" from Wilkinson
cutlers to the Queen.
Poter Chambers
In his spare time he combed along the hot blade and the museums of London and straightening it between fixed
Sword Lid, of Pall Mall, sword- found out all there was to know metal pegs. him and kissed
The question he was asked i love you," she croaked. there one night by д girl
So out Whereupon he shouted back at startled him. It was
the top of his lunges I love nf place, so untrue type. "How much do you know about 704." GOD?"
Rather a different sortibi love
In a Devon court recently a | policeman giving evidence said
the
necused "seized what
To which the ex-pilot replier from the kind that screams at appeared to be a walking-stick
us from the cinema hoardings. -"to put an end to a futile An utterly selfless, sincere love conversation," he explains of all mankind.
about swords.
no
Whale oil
Krips (a Japanese export) that the hand doesn't slip...
50
Sparks flew. A man in tennis shoes sat crouched like a jockey and
the edre of pround "survival knives" at a hugo grindstone, as tall Ds himself and 20 times as henvy,!
Survival knives are the macholes (sugar-cane imnives) of the Second World War. And they are still manufactured for the Forces to cut, kill, or open cons with,
Kunning his finger down the' groove of an Army sword Mr Clayton said: "We call this the fullor in the trade, Outside they call it the blood-gut,
So peaceable it was in the sword-factory, looking out, over- D football stound with children's swings and a slide.
I walked out with my sword- slick and got on the tube, thinkding, "If only they fanét."
Wilkinson's sell 100 sword- sticks a year. Who buys them?
The
Commander Labe "Buster" Crabbe, the frogman,
carried a swordstick. The only clher man i know who carries one is author Richard Pape ("Boldness Be My Friend").
Offensive
"Don't think I own a sword, I don't.. It's just tormingery to me. Most of them are pressed.
Discussing whether I was of by machine, but the special swords, which have to be hand- was not to be his co-driver on "It's a study in itself. I have forged, I like to do myself. a 10,000-mile car journey from
other hobby," he said.
Cape North to the Cape of Good "You've got everything from Navy and Air Force officers Hope, Pape and I were walking the Crusader swords of the carry their swords in black-and- down an obscure alloy in Soho, twelfth century to the British gilt scabbards. The cavalry when he suddenly whipped the Army short bayonet. Not to wear the longest words (32 blade out of his walking stkic
scimitars, mention
and
all inches), and that's why they and declared; 've gat be tend to trip over ther when careful in these dark places. Russian agents are after me.” they get off their horses.
Officers Dool their swords to save the heavy expense of buy Ing one each.
and drew a sword from it. I managed to dodge two thrusts."
"God is an Inward conscience,
into the I thrust personal to us all that tells us And today his
is reward
my way
"Why don't you what we ought to do, and what manifest. For there
are Ryder Sword shop.
our factory?" sold we ought not: one thing to some Cheshire Missions and Homes Ko and see
Green, of us, another to others. It's for the Relief of Suffering, In Mr Charles Just as simple as that...." many parts of the world, sup- efter I had Introduced myself, that."
ported by the practical assist feeling like James Bond, and As simple as that? Was it once of other men and women tested a few admirals cutlasses.
really? He began to think, and who have felt too, as the author his thoughts turned to action. quotes at the end, "that no man Yes, to action. That is why this is an Island entire of self." book--and the Odyssey it re- cords- so different from most confessions on paper.
For it does not preach. Nor dives It pontificate, Instead, shows, in simple language, how one man came to save his soul by, fighting a new kind of war, in peacetime.
A war against the indifference too many of us feel towards the plight of the unwanted and the unloved: the very old and the the very helpless, above all, doomed ones, soon to die.
Heritage
manager,
Ceremonial
We went down to the forge shop, Swords start here as foot- Jong billets of steel, which are bashed, hardened and tempered into true English blades by serious men from Erling ond Acton Town.
'Blood-gut'
I didn't believe Pape. But I believed the duty sergeant at Chelsea police station when I walked in, flourishing my sword- allck and said: “Am 7, within the meaning of the Act, carry- Ing an offensive weapon?"
In my James Bond-type shirt (size 16 collar. pake blue Oxford), matching socks (size Foreman Sidney Rouse Even in the R.AS.C. An Leonard Cheshire, now happily 10), journeyed to Turnham plunged a sword-blade into officer must carry a sword on The sergeant replied: "No; The Act does not define ceremonial necasions, though he sir. married to Sue Ryder, a woman Green, a West London suburb, trough of molten lead. "This is
some and learned has be
"We equally
surprising the tempering," he said. whose life dedicated to salvage work, facts about swords.
But I caught you do this after we have hardened may have no better use for it the exact nature of an offensive
than slashing open the cartons weapon, the blade by heating it recently saw their son Jeromy
and af stewed steak and baked beans. with In Brompton-road it celebrate his first birthday.
"Call it the H-bomb age if slicking it in a tub of whale
three o'clock in the morning I'd you like," said Jimmy Clayton, oil."
rike it here," said Welsh- require you to do some explain- What a heritage this boy supervisor of swords. "But we Dwords should have growing up with are making so many
the rest of nowadays some of the lads are parents who put
before working up to 7 pm on over- mankind and its needs
time." their own.
Expensive
Ing at the station."
woman Gertrude Selkirk, the only woman in the only sword
Fantastic self-confidence factory in the British Isles.
have, carrying. this swordstick. used to be a checker an elec-
Now Send me to any stom-centre or Behind him, under a phalo- trical equipment factory.
trouble - spot - Elisabethville; prach of Queen Victoria, a I know most of the regiments Salisbury: or Havana, Cuba Not a very cheerful crusade, Do you do that? Even Wilkinson's are tho only swordmaker drank rich, brown in the country. and their
be. your reaction may
Wasnt occasionally?
and I shall brave the multitudə It is not an sword-makers left in England. tea out of an enamel cup.
with, confidence. there something rather morbid, unimportant question mark to and they turn out about 6,000 rather odd about such a com- consider as a new era with Its swords year. They matte for None
Don't call me coward. 1:am plate abandonment of all the personal equations and its all the Armed Forces of Britain, powered machine tools here. on to the fish-skin grip of even prepared to walk around
the U.S. Marines, the Sudan Beits pleasures of the springtime of challenges opens before us.
police, Nigeria, Ghana, Burma, driving
one's own life?
Zeigh..
-(London Exprem Serulca).
J. P. BROWN
HANAGER
PRIVATE
CANDLE MANUFACTURER
i
crests."
Your individually Mrs Selkirk bound gola wire fall over flywheels, Novy sword. I didn't know It
drop hammers and but all swords
have Ash-akin Notting
~~(London Express Service),
* Idon't know what's happened to Honey-1 know he expected you. because he hid the whisky!