0
THE HONGKONg Telegraph, THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1937.
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The
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Hongkong Telegraph.
THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1937,
WHY NOT BRITISH? Surprise is being manifested in British industrial circles locally at the possibility that foreign cement may be utilised
in the construction of the Colony's new military barracks at Stanley when there are ample supplies of the local product available for such undertakings. It is stated that both British cement and steel were originally specified in the contract, but that the stipulation regarding cement | was later waived, possibly in the rise in the order to offset price of steel and thus enable the work to be carried out with-
in the sum set aside for the scheme by the War Office. Con- firmation of this point cannot be obtained. It is, however, de- tender finitely known that the
which has been accepted does not call for British cement, and,
BELGIUM wants to
R
OCROY, Steenkerke. Neerwinden, Namur, Ramillies, Oudenarde, "Fontenay. Jemappes, Fleurus, Quatre Bras. Ligny, Waterloo. Mons, Charterol, Ypres, Yser, Passchendaele.
Those are all grent battle names of Europe in the past 300 years. Add minor batlles and you could treble the list with case.
And every one of these battles was fought somewhere in a small patch of territory, nothing like a hundred miles square, in Brabant and Hainault and Fianders.
It lies in a country which during these three centuries has been the Spanish Netherlands, the Austrian Netherlands, part of the French
. Republic, part the Napoleonic Empire. part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Now it is Belgium. Someone I don't know who- once christened it the Cockpit of Europe.
It has been fought over, again and again, by Spaniards and French, by British und Dutch, by Prussians and Austrians and Ger- mans generally,
None of these wars has been any direct concern of the Belgians themselves. Their land has been n bone of contention; or 11 has just happened to lie in the way, bo- tween Louis XIV and William III, for instance, or between Germany and France in 1914.
The war of 1870 was the only bir one in Western Europe, for 300 years that did not munuge some- how or other to drift into the Netherlands, And that, perhaps.
་
CLOSE the
"COCKPIT"
by
W. N. EWER
King
Loopold
says lo the Big
Powers:
"Fight no
moro balilas horo,"
only because the German victory was so swift and decisive.
All this is "historical back- ground." But it is a background, of which Beigluns are very con- Ecious. And it goes a long way towards explaining that "New Belgian polley" which has caused such a lot of surprise and Indignation.
I is quite inevitable that to a Belgin Government it should seem just plain common sense to ru its policy with the idea of avolding in the future the use of Belgium as a convenient cockpit by its big neighbours.
That is why a few years after it became, for the first time in his- tory, an independent State. Bel- glum became also a neutral
country. with neutrality guaran- teed by Britain. France ond Prussia. That neutrality WAS observed in 1870, broken in 1014.
TO-DAY, In a slightly dif
rerent form, and under
T
a different name, she wants Lu revert to that same polley. It does not provide a per- fect guarantee against being made a cockpit but, as things are to- Bay, it seems to the Belgians to give the best chance they can see,
Things, you see, have changed" since 1910. Then realisation that neutrailty had falled was very strong. Pride-played on by flat- tery in Paris-suggested that the status of a Switzerland was un- worthy of Belgium.
All the tendency was towards a Fystem comnosed of ons-quarter of
the new League of Nations, three-
quarters of a perpetuation of the victorious alliance.
The Belgian Government almost automatically aligned itself. It not only joined the League. In 1020 General Maglinse, Chief of the General Staff, signed secret mill- tary agreement with Marshal Foch. It was the first of the post- war nillances,
In 1023 Belgian troops marched with the French into the Ruhr, Belgian officials" played a part, if a subordinate one, in the French attempt to set up a Rhineland Republic separate from the Reich.
Now such a policy was all very well so long as France was all- powerful in Western Europe: so long as Germany was, economic- ally, militarlly, diplomatically. powerless and bound to an acquiescence tempered only by evasion.
VEN so. 1
WAS not
E entirely popular. There
were Belgians enough who disliked the idea of entire dependence ол French policy. And this dislike was warmed into resentment by the reckless way
In which some French politicians and ucwspapers of the Right frankly showed that they re- garded Belgium as a political and military dependency.
Remember-because this is very important and too often for gotten that Belgium le not a "French" country. The majority 1s Flemish speaking, and distrust- and ful of French influence French penetration.
However, the policy of close alliance with France, clothed after 1025 in the decent equilibrium of Locarno, seemed at any rate safe. seemed to involve no particular danger, until last year.
Then four new factors pushed themselves to the very forefront of Belgian consciousness,
18
Germany had rearined, and was becoming roughly speaking, strong as France. Confidence in. the value of League guarantees had waned as a result of the Locarno Abyssinian experience.
had been denounced. And Franco-
as the foreign product is cheap- THE GRAVES OF
THE GRAVES OF FAMOUS MEN
er, It seems certain that the lat--
ter will be used. This does not graves of our illustrious dend would not have It otherwise, for It minster wus offered, he was by his
own request laid bealde his father and mother. The plain, broad tomb- stone bears the names of himself and his brother John, surmounted by the family crest-two wyverns and the motto "Humilitate."
A high iron railing surrounds the
of him are indeed "scattered far and is in keeping with the lite
whose whole existence was:- wide." Restricting this brief survey of course, imply that the coment to men of letters, we instinctively
"lived in pleasant thought, As if life's business were a will be below the standard return in the Arst instance to West-
minster Abbey, our national Valhalla, summer mood."
A few miles distant, under the quired, but, unless there are and there in the Poets' Corner we
find ourselves literally walking over shadow of Crosthwaite Church, is to overwhelming considerations to the graves of men whose names are be found the grave of Southey, an- family burial ground, giving it an air the other poet of Lakeland. A more of aloofness and austerity which is Here Be the contrary, it does seem that household words. in contracts of this kind a pre-mortal remains of Samuel Johnson, imposing stone marks his last resting-characteristic of the principal figure place, and a well-worn path which whose remains rest therein; yet one Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, and ference should to be shown for many others, and as we gaze on the leads to it shows that his memory is constrained to turn back and look
is still revered.
again upon a name which conjures the British commodity. There familiar names graven on the pave-
It might have been more fitting had up passages of haunting prose which ment underfoot, we feel ns If we
in have been to many a wayfarer "a is one factor which strengthens were on sacred ground
and step Coleridge also been laid to rest
Laiteland, with its many terary kind of roadmelody or marching this contention, namely, that the reverently aside.
Shakespeare, the greatest of them associations, and where some of his music of mankind."
best
Had Robert Burns been laid to rest disparity in price between Hong- all, rests in front of the altar of the
work was produced, instead of in Higligale Cemetery, on
the in a
a simple grave by Alloway Kirk kong-produced and foreign old church at Stratford-on-Avon, the northern fringe of London, but this or in the old town of Ayr, it would little town where he was born. As was not to be. Still, it affords some have been more acceptable to his due to cement is partially
we view the worn slab that covers satisfaction to know that he sleeps at admirers than in a costly mausoleum 28028"dumping." Japanese coment, his bones and the bust that
looks no great distance from his "dearest in the town of Dumfries, where the to friend," Charles Lamb, whose re- grim tragedy of his closing days was for instance, is sold in Japan at down upon it, we find it difficult
realise that here lies the great one yen per 100 lbs., but in dramatist to whom the whole civilised mains are interred in the churchyard enacted.
at Edmonton.
Dumfries has thus gained a fame Hongkong, it can be procured
of habitants were slow in awaking to at from $1.40 to $1.50 per since his eyes closed upon the mariah Wight. A narrow, recumbent stone the fact that they had
scene. The church is ringed with 250 lbs. Haiphong cement comes cims; the placid river flows softly by: covers the grave, and as, there are sorting with one of the Immortals. one Posterity has tried to make amends; into the Colony even cheaper and in the ancient churchyard you similar stones on either side,
burled there, Burns will ever find himself ex- may (if you are so minded) rest for might pass the spot without know- but the pilgrim to the shrine of a splice on the seat where Longfellowing that the poet is
strip were it not for a narrow
of claiming, The pity of it- the sat while he composed those lines wood bearing his name which calls pity of it!" entitled "To the Avon":
"Flow on, fair stream! His dream attention to the fact.
In Far Samoa Carlyle's Friend
PHONE
The Better Way However, is To Utilise Our Maintenance Service
This-service will relleve you of the worry and expense caused by defective plumbing requiring urgent attention. Under our maintenance contract, we examine all equipment weekly, carry out repairs and adjustments before they become a nuisance to tenant or worry and expense to owner.
A compotent staff is on duty day and night. Service calls are carried out under our maintenance contract without further ! charge.
than three centuries have clapsed churchyard of St. Boniface, Isle world pays homage, and that morg Swinburne rests in the beautiful it scarcely deserves, for its in-
been con-
German relations had became de-i cidedly strained.
That was enough to set Belglan politicians worrying and wonder- ing.
The French General Staff did the rest.
In the Staff talks which fol lowed the crisis of March, 1030, the French made that point of view quite plain to their Belgian col- leagues.
The soldiers did not worry about such diplomatic nfeetles as "un- provoked
In aggression."
tho event of trouble with Germany the Belgian army would act as the left wing of the French. All facili- ties would be given for the passage of French troopa-and British- through Belgium. The British Air Foreo would be provided with ad- vanced bases in Belgian territory.
A
ND all these arrange- ments would be made in
peace time: would so Involve the three countries that if trouble camo it would be useless to aplit diplomatic hairs about “un- - provoked aggression." They would all be in it anyway from the start.
The French Gentral Btaff had overplayed their hand. King Leopold and his Ministers were thoroughly scared.
The policy now proposed to them was not in any sense collective security. It was not a European polley or a Belgian policy, It was Just-in the very narrowest sense-- a French policy, Belgium was to be fitted in to the plans of the French Sta without the least considera- tion for Belgian views or interesta. She was to become an auxillary state.
Now in the Arst place such a policy could not possibly be sold to the Belgian people. The Flemings would oppose vehemently. There would be deep misgivings-to put It mildly-among the Walloons: Degrelle and his Rextats would make enormous capital out of it, Politically, it was impossible.
Internationally. It was a policy of the cockpit. It was to invite French armies to march into Bel gium, to provoke Gorman armies: to invade Belgium, to offer the un- happy country às an arena, in which, if "it" should come, the Western Powers would again fight their battles. Rocroy, Steonkerke, Neerwinden and the rest,
K
'ING LEOPOLD and his Ministers recoiled. They were being pressed to follow a purely French policy.
-If self-interest was to be the order of the day. thon Belgium, too, would follow a policy of self-in- terest. And Belgium's interest was ince she herself was not likely to be drawn into a quarrel-to keep out of Blg Power quarrels.
Spank, the Socialist Foreign Minister, startled the diplomatic World Inst July by a speech. in which he declared that Belgium would only fight in defence of Bel- gian territory. It was a declaration of neutrality still more a declara- tion of Independence.
Leopold's speech in October, all the diplomatic moves since, have just dotted the “l's” and crossed the "t's" of Spaak's speech.
Belgium's new line is clear. She Intends, while the present situn- tion lasts, to try to keep clear, She will commit herself to none of her neighbours. She will try to keep friends with them all,
· If they choose to quarrel she will try to keep out. If they choose to night she will try to stay neutral. guarding her own frontiers. Diplo- matically and militarily, she will have one objective: to endeavour never to be again as so often in the past, the cockpit of Europe.
"TN Paris, in Moscow, there is a tendency to scold and
to be indignant. That is futilo. It will confirm the Belgians in their suspicions and their resolution."
For Big Powers the lesson-and it is to be read elsewhere than in Brussels-is that small Powers are weary of the role of auxillary, of Catspaw, if you will: that if they want to play Power politics they will have to play it by themselves
and run its risks alone.
And for all of us: that if you want to build a system of collte. tive decurity, it must be honestly designed, and that the advantages it offers to those joining in it must outweigh the risks.
still, being in compétition with the Japanese product. A case could, admittedly, be made out for use of foreign products 'by is o'er;
And what of those whose "resting: private firms when competing He stands upon another shore:
In an obscure corner of the ad-graves" are under alien skickar A vaster river near him flows,
In for contracts one with another,
And still he follows where it goes." Jaining churchyard of Bonchurch the from the land of their birth?
grave of John Sterling, Curlyle's this connection we immediately think always provided the quality is Lakeland Shrines great friend and admirer, may be of Shellery and Keats, whose ashes found by those who care to seck it. lie in the Eternal City, and of many not in dispute, and in which
Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere An unpretentious stone marks the others one might name. But there adoption of the principle of buy-has little to distinguish it from those last resting place of him whom the is "exile
one
whose name has ‘ai ing in the cheapest market surrounding It. The simple tomb- sage described as "that radiant child stronger appeal to all true Scots than might mean the difference be- stone which bears his name is of the empyrean," and whose last any of these, and as we think of it,
identical with those which press letter to Carlyle was to be "for ever there rises before us the vision of
memorable," as, indeed, it is.
mountain top in a far Pacific isle tween gaining and losing a con- close upon it on either, side, yet one
Coming nearer home, our steps on which there is a lonely grave over tract. But the same considera-
naturally gravitate toward Dryburgh which the breezes of the tion scarcely applies to a British very considerable orders for its the mortal remains of Sir Walter we think of "R. L. S. we seem to Abbey, under whose broken arches seas will sigh for evermore; and us Government Department, even product from this quarter. The Scott repose, with the rippling hear though taxpayers money is in-same principle ought surely to waters of his beloved Tweed mur- muring a quiet requiem. This is volved. It is pertinent in this apply here in Hongkong in re-surely the perfect setting for the connection to note that in the spect of all Government con- tomb of him whose mogle pen threw a fresh glamour over the romantic big naval, and milltary works at tracts. If a Government Do Borderland, and whose name will be Sanitary, Heating & Ventilating Dept.
Singapore, the use of British partment does not do all in its for ever associated with the scenes the mortal remains of our great ones of them in the hearts and minds of
he so eloquently portrayed.
are laid. "For of illustrious men all all mankind." PHONE DAY No. 28021 NIGHT, WEEK-END No. 28028 cement has been stipulated, with power to foster and encourage
Thomas Carlyle's last resting-place the earth is the sepulchre, and it is the result that the Green Island British Industry, who clue is Cement Company lins secured likely to do so?
We would be pleased to inspect your property and give further particulars and prices on receipt of your instructions.
The low cost of this maintenance service will surprise you.
DODWELL
& CO.,
LTD.
southern
For Vaca call to Allermuir Acrosa wide leagues of foam-
"I proudly guard his sacred dust, And hold it lovingly in trust For you, his Hills of Home.'" But after all, it matters little where
To-day's Thought- INWARD serenity becomes
outward strength.
—W. T. MURRAY.
W. Fordyce Clark.
is in the old churchyard at Ecclefe not the inscribed column in their "The name of the mountain - in chan, near the house where he was own land which is the record of their Samoa on whose summit "R. L. 8,” born. Although a grave in West- virtues, but the unwritten memory was laid to rest.