THE HONGKONG TE ·LEGRAPHI, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1938.
TO ADD SPARKLE
TO YOUR
SPIRITS
THIS CHRISTMAS
INSIST ON'
WATSON'S WATERS
OLD FAVOURITES
FOR
The Festive Season
H.M.V. Recordings
C1681 Old Time Songs ..Jack Hylton's Orchestra & Vocalists C-1741 Songe of the Past
Light Opera Company
C-2077
Musical Trip round the British Isles
C-2624 50 Years of Song
C-2650 Drury, Lane Memories
C-2716
Ballado Memories
C-2868 Our Greatest Successes
Reginald Foort (Organ) .London Palladium Orchestra Sydney Custard (Organ) .New Mayfair Orchestra
Cicely Courtnedge & Jack Hulbert
C-2882 Immortal Strauss-Medley Of Waltzes..Viennese Orch. C-2682 Selection of Wild Sanderson's Songs
C-1783 More Old Songs C-2651 Medley of Popular Classics
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HONGKONG HOTEL GARAGE
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Tel. 27778-9.
Hongkong Telegraph.
Wyndham
St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 December 20, 1938
Now-Stop to Madness
The whole fabric of Law and
Order, upon which our Civilisa- tion is based, is rapidly dis- integrating.
EUROPE
FATHER TIME: "IF I WRITE THIS DOWN UNDER 1938 A.D. THEY WON'T BELIEVE IT."
-Stribe in the London "Daily Express"
HOW DOES it all come about that Memel, this commonplace Baltic seaport, which, in spite of its 700 years of history, has dull modern buildings and provincial
That criminal result of the shops, should
monstrous policy of armaments have tion upon which the entire world has embarked is becoming
∙an
such
power
to the
inexorable certainty from deepen
which, soon, there can be no anxieties of a states-
escape.
reached astronomical
Terence Casey (Organ) jack Hylton's Orchestrations, .Sydney Gustard (Organ)
S. Moutrie & Co., Ltd.
York Building
Chater Road.
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3. 5. Van KOUTHIS
AT.
THE
Opening SATURDAY 24th DECEMBER
Photo
KING'S
Count the “TELEGRAPHS” everywhere
on
is
It is a German town and it is Lithuanian soil. It is n Lutheran town, and it is in a Roman Catholic State. It German because it was founded by Germans and settled by Ger- the Lithuanians grabbed it. mans. It is Lithuanian because
The Teutonic Knights founded
Every nation is wasting its man? substance in preparation for the calamity of another World War. The cost of armaments has proper representing a drain upon the world's resources that is staggering in its immensity.
We, as individuals, appear powerless to halt this insensate folly that can have but one end-it as an outpost of Christendom ing-War and the destruction of civilisation that has taken centuries to mould.
The real tragedy of the calamity that has overtaken the. world is the helplessness of the As if hypnotised, we can do nothing but stand' im- potent, as nation after nation is seized by the maniacal jungle phobia-the law that only the fit can survive and the weak are doomed--and join In the race for survival,
SE
masses.
in the heathen and Slavonic East. They spread the religion - of Jesus with the sword.
Perhaps missionary zeal was not the only incentive of these warriors. Memel stands at the eastern end of the Amber Coast. Under the waters of the Baltic, somewhere opposite the town of Konigsberg, is a sunken amber
reef.
The climax, terrible to con-
When storms trouble the template, is certain unless o waters amber, broken off this wave of sanity can miraculously reef, is washed on to the sands rid the world of its insensate between Danzig and Memel.
fears.
The Story
of
It was a raid, and in force. Kövno, capital of Lithuania, re- ported that the Meme! popula- tion, crying, "Down with the German Free City," had, by spontaneous act, formed # Supreme Council of Defence and demanded incorporation ín Lithuania.
MEMEL
Names New -Dortmund, Memelburg. Memel, Klai- peda.
Owners-Knights of the Teu- tonic Order, Hanseatic League, Swedes, Prussians, Lithuanians,
Present Status-Bune of con-
tention between Adolf Hiller's Reich and Antanas Smetona's Republic of Lithuania. Future-Only certainty "which can be predicted is that cause of em- of a barrassment to distracted democracy.
Main Street, Memel,
by Alexander
Alan Whelan
200
The French soldiers announced that they would re- sist the invaders to the Inst. Ambasadors met in Paris. The British cruiser Caledon was ordered to the Baltic. A French colonel was despatched to com- mand the garrison. An Allied protest went to Lithuania.
tio Meanwhile,
Lithuanian raiders come nearer. They have exchanged shots with the French. They demand the with- drawal of the French troops. Another Allied protest is sent to Lithuanin,
Then, on January 16, all is over: "~The" green-armleted raid- ers close in on the French garri- Hon. There is fighting round the prefecture. It is said that. the French fight valiantly, though desperately out-number- ed. It is certain that they do. not fight to the Inst. The news- Frenchman papers report one killed and three wounded before a truce is called.
The French High Commission- er makes his last and most solemn protest. And that is all. Memel is in the hands of
had taken the Lithuanians. A month later
Through long centuries this has 1923. A High Commissioner of Ruhr. Bonar Law To the mad rush for arma-gone on, so that amber not only the Allies, a Frenchman, ruled the equally fateful decision that the conference of Ambassadors ments and yet more armaments can be found on the shore, but in the Memel prefecture. A Britain would not march with proposes that the town should be handed over to Lithuania pro- there must be an ending, for no is also mined under dry land, garrison of 200 French soldiers them, nation can indefinitely bear the Of the quarter-million pounds gave reality to his government On January 11 the sky-blue vided it is given a
terrific financial and economic of amber found
every year in with their bayonets, strain upon its resources. That the world, 220,000 pounds come ending is-War.
from this region. The Teutonic
local autonomy.
measure of
columns of French infantry marched Into Essen. About the same time, note two events of By the law of the jungle Knights presented themselves
the highest significance. The which the nations of the world with a monopoly of all the amber Lithuania was in arrogant mood. their troops from. Germany. A to Lithuania proper, their work prostrate. Americans decide to withdraw The green-armlets filter back. have adopted, the weakest must found. Penalty for poaching- She had been stung in her, na- "Iferr Adolf Hitler," lender of done. They can feel confident be the first to drop from the death by hanging.
race. That will not be the fate
Empiro, in
which those ́ terri-
Germany Was
BWORTH
器
In due
tional pride by the seizure of the National Socialists, "the so- that, in the words of the of Democracy, as exemplified by
Vilna, once her capital, by the called Fascist of Bavaria, ad. Lithuanian Prime Minister, Great Britain and the United
Poles The Lithuanians de dresses a huge demonstration at solution will be found which States, both of which are able
manded that Memel be handed Munich. The crowd
"corresponds with the wishes of Before the war Memel was a over to them. True, its people vengeance on France.
the population." to bear much greater amputa- depressed German scaport. It were German, but the inhabi tions of wealth and resources
At a conference at Lausanne, And so it proves. was depressed because it was cut tants of the country districts Lord Curzon was patching up a course, the League of Nations for security than they have yet off from its hinterland, the round the town were Lithuanian. peace treaty with the resurgent throws the cloak of legality and been called upon to suffer. ItLithuanian farmlands and the Besides, it was. Lithuania's only Turkey of Kemel Pasha. will be the fate of the Totali-forests of Poland. The Russian possiblo outlet to the sea.
In the respectability over the land- tarians, whose life-blood has
United States, Mr. Baldwin was grabbing exploit of the already been drained away by tories were incorporated, had had met proposed that Memel Americans.
A conference of Anibassadors talking Debt Settlement with the Lithuanians. Memel becomes an reckless transfusions that have
autonomous unit with the Rought to vitalise their
scaports of its own, Libau, wir
In a by-election in Newcastle sovereignty of Lithuania. Bri- machines.
Vindau, and Riga. They got the
East the big issue was what the tain, France, and Italy are The fear that clutches at the.
newspapers called "our constant guarantors of her Constitution. heart of man is this! will
problem," unemployment. Totalitarianism, if its reckless- nesa hurls, it over the brink of the abyss, go over alone? Or will it, in obedience to the law of the jungle it has instituted, turn on its victors and. In one last despairing effort, carry them and Civilisation, too, into the depths below?
The road nations are follow ng is the road to mariness, Pray God that, before it is too ate, they will find sanctuary in sanity.
L
business which would naturally have been Memel's.
AS
bo.given the same status Danzig. Lithuania rejected their excellencies' suggestions. Memel must be Lithuanian!
Forgotten by the world was sleepy, Memel until the Treaty of Versailles took it from Ger- many and set up an inter-Allied The month of January 1923 raced into the sky, one new cloud national machinery, in hopeless. Administration. Memel's des was a time of crisis. It was one appeared-Memel, A small disorder-that there may once tiny was to remain in suspense of those crowded moments when cloud, so small that the news. more be raiders on the roads. until the statesmen of the Allies, the long agony of post-war papers hardly noticed it. near Memel, with armlets, but busy about their godlike task of Europe crystallises in conflict On January 10, it was reported not green armleta-awastikas reshaping a world by drawing and decision... Statesmen were that Lithuanian bands were ad- this time, the raiders of Herr new lines on maps in Paris, concerned with great issues, vancing on the town. They wore Hitler-this is a conception that should have made up their minds. Nowspapers were electric. Des- in civilian clothes but they wore was far, far away from the what was to be done with it, liny moved at a gallop.
the them, perhaps as many as 8,000 the there were several thousands of 1923.
green armlets. It appeared that thoughts of men in January
Not so far in December, 1988!
On the vast and stormy That the day will come when.. horizon of this world of January the world is once more busy, its 1923, where huge black clouds statesmen "distracted, its Inter-
1919 to the month of January fateful decision to enter This was the situation from The French had taken