THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPHY, TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1939. ·
Life Begins at 8:01
ENGINEERING|
leadership
GIVES IN ALL VAUXHALLS~~
Remarkable Economy
(20% mare m.p.g.) Independent Springing (changes riding into gliding) Controlled Synchromesh (you can't help making a good change)
No-Draught Ventilation (fresh air without shivers)
We will provide an adequate trio! run on any Vauxhall model, and demonstrate Its patrol economy.
Burnett's
Celebrates LONDON
DRY GINILI
sturls you off right
HONGKONG HOTEL GARAGE
Stubbs Rd.
Tel. 27778-9.
À. S. WATSON & CO., LTD. Vauxhall
MOUTRIE PIANOS
REALLY EXPERT
OPINION
15 UNANIMOUS IN ITS CHOICE OF THE
"MOUTRIE" FOR MODERN HOMES
AND MODERN PEOPLE.
THE NEW
'MINIATURE
FITS INTO THE SMALLER HOME WITHOUT EITHER DWARFING THE REST OF
THE FURNISHINGS OR ITSELF LOOKING A "MINIATURE"
AND IN USE IT IS A BIG PIANO;
"RESONANT IN TONE"
· "RESPONSIVE IN TOUCH"
CALL AND INSPECT THIS NEW MODEL
S. Moutrie & Co., Ltd.
York Building
CHAMOTON
Chater Road
You can depend on CHAMPION SPARK
for SPEED
Speed, properly used, increases the pleasure of motoring. To get the best spoed from your ear without sacrificing economy, in. stall new Champions. These are the plugs racing champions use witli constant success on land, in the air and on the water.
General Distributors:
DODGE & SEYMOUR (CHINA) LTD.
Shanghal, Hongkong, Herbin Champion Spark Fing Company
CHECK AND CLEAN SPARK PLUGS WHEN YOU CHANGE ONL
CANTON AGENTS
for the
Hongkong
Telegraph
WM. FARMER & CO.
Victoria Hotel Building. Shameen, Canton.
13501.
TRY THE 10 AND 12 HP.
The
Hongkong Telegraph.
Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 January 10, 1939
World Burden
IT WOULD be difficult, in the
annals of human folly, to discover anything quite so fan- tastic as the present prodigious squandering of the wealth of nations on the creation of in-
for their struments
mutuai destruction.
Hardly a week passes but the report comes from one quarter or another of new outlays, fresh burdens and growing budget deficits.
Last year, according to the League of Nations' Armaments Year Book, the aggregate world expenditure on armaments was estimated at £2,400,000,000, *| figure which probably errs, if At anything, on the low side.
the existing rate of expansion it can only be a matter of a year or two till the £3,000,000,000 mark is reached.
ruce
Even in 1932, before the Armaments
began, the world expenditure, at £1,300,- 000,000, was already sufficiently colossal, yet to-day we look back upon it as an ideal to which we would all of us only too gladly return if we could. That, un- happily, is more than we dare hope. But no one can refrain from asking himself how much longer the nations can go on standing not only the material but the psychological strain.
arc
Among the curious fentures of the mad armaments race is that the nations which
their always complaining of "poverly" are the very ones which have chosen the role of
in pacema ers
rearmament. Great Britain, who can afford a
good deal, lagged far behind in the race till she was forced into
it by the rapid armaments ex- pansion of some of the soi- distant "have-nots."
66
"CORSICA...NICE... TUNIS"
What's behind it
BY W. N. EWER
who wrote this article during the week-end- before leaving for Morocco, tollere he hopes to have a peaceful holiday.
C
Rome.
ORSICAL Nizzat Tuni- slat" shout the well- drilled spontaneous demonstrators" in
Why Corsica, why Nice, why Tunis? What are they to Italy or Italy to them?
The answer has nothing to de with Fascism. Signor Mussolin! has his own purposes in the or- ganisation of these "spontaneous demonstrations," But Italian patriots were shouting for Corsien and Nice and Tunis before he or Fascismo was born.
The cry for Corsica goes back to the great days of the struggle for Italian unity. For Mazzini it was Divine will that all the Italian peoples should be joined in one Italian state. Garibaldi ealled him- self an atheist: but he felt much the same.
THEIR doctrine was that of the Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, ein Reich." They did not say "ein Fuehrer," because they were democrats and hated people like Louis Napoleon.
But for them Corsien was a part of Italy under the heel" of France, just as Venice and the Trentino and Trieste were "under
the heel of Austria. It and until '17 sen part of the Genoese Re- public.
Its people were "Italians": at Unity any rate spoke Itallan. would not be complete until they came home to tag."
Italian nationalism has never really renounced that ambition. though policy has often imposed silence about it.
Language and history are Its basis. It has only one flow. Which is that the people of Corsien have not the slightest desire to be- come Italians.
What Italians call the French. conquest was for them a libera- tion from Genbese appression. Anyway, they have been French now for nearly two Their language is still Italian, but all their feeling and all their loyalty are for France.
centuries.
So are their interests. The on- bitious young Corsican-like a young man named Bonaparte in his day goes to France to find a career. The public services are full of them.
EVEN if (Incredibly) France were to cede them,
Corsicans the would fight to the death against an Italian conquest; all the more so against a Fascist conquest: they are tenacious at their liberty.
So whatever its origins. the cry of Corsical I mere Jingoistic folly. So is the shout of "Nicet " --though there in the beginning real Italian nationalism. had enough grievance.
5
Nico and Bavoy were the price from extorted by Napoleon III Piedmont for the help of the
[SAVOY]
NICE
CORSICAL
FRENCH
SARDINIA
ITALIANI
ALGERIA
TUNIS
T
SICILY
YUGO-
SLAVIA
MALTA
PANTELLARIA
LIBYA
ITALIAN
French army against Austria in 1859.
Cavour pald the price with a shrug of the shoulders. It was for him good business. It not only Avc him Lombardy: it meant French assent to the formation of United Italy.
as
But less calculating Nationalists raged. Garibaldi, a Nizzard him-
Cavour self, denounced traitor: planned a raid on Nice to prevent the fake plebiscite which was duly held: was only at the last minute persuaded to sail on his historic expedition to Bicly in- stead.
LOUIS NAPOLEON, by the way, was just as good at the plebiscite game as Herr titler himself. In the town of Nlee-only 11 votes were cast against the annexationi
Europe was shocked at French expansion, England in particular was angry and alarmed: for Louts Napoleon was a bogyman.
This
hypocrite and footpad has pinched the silver spoons," wrote
nant Ambassador Hudson. indignant
Palmerston and John Russell were worried lest the new Italy and all the little nations would "fall through fear and helplessness into the hands of France." The Queen wrote that if this sort of thing is allowed to go on bloody wars and universal misery must be the con- sequence.
There was talk of war: but it all died away: new crises and new ex- citements came.
Nearly 30 years have gone. Nice to-day is thoroughly French, of its considerable Italian population the majority is very anti-Faselst. But nationalism never forgets the past. Every now and again the cry of
الات الامة ال
A Spahi of Tunisia, the territory Mussolini covets,
"Nizzał goes up: especi- ally when it happens to sult Italian diplomacy.
But in fact nelther the clamour for restoration of Corsica nor the clamour for restoration of Nice Is The third a serious ono. cry. though, the cry of "Tunisia!"
quite Italy's another matter. grievance over Tunis is not one of nationalism. It goes back nearly sixty years. Even more
is
In the mid-nineteenth century. Italy's links with Tunis were al- ready close. The ploneers (what an irony) were Italian Jews from Leghorn, who still form the trad- ing and Anancial aristocracy there. Then came humbler emigrants from the overcrowded south, sett- ling around Tuni City and the wine-growing country where once was Carthage. Many (it is odd to recall were retugees flying from
"Liberal" the new
regime home
Italy began to look on Tunis as her predestined share in the com- ing partition of Northern Africa. And so it might have been. But at the Berlin (Pence with Honour) Congress. Salisbury. to get French assent to his taking of Cyprus, alig- fested that France might and
compensation "in Tunis.
at
BISMARCK, for his own ends, cordially backed the suggestion. All this,
of course, in deadest secret.
Italy's suspicions were roused. She asked and got assurances from France: took them at face value: waited too long. In '81 there was an incident on the Tunis-Algiers border. The French troops were ready. Within a few weeks Tunis was a French protectorate.
Great Britain, tongue in cheek. solemnly protested against the sho bad aggression
suggested. Italy raged furiously: and has been angry ever since. For nearly sixty years the "Tunisian ques- tion" has troubled Franco-Italian relations.
Not only Franco-Italian. In 1890
Girls Are GRIN AND BEAR IT Naughtiest At 15 To 18
Bpart of the population.
DOYS ef 13 form the most lawless
Germany, the biggest pact- maker of them all, is a country of whose lack of resources her rulers are constantly reminding and 18.
At that age 13.5 of every 1,000 are found golty of indictable effences. In girls the worst age is between 15 Desire for adventuro and excite-
cenily.
the people. Japan, the poorest meut in boys and love of personal of them all, is the country display in girls are blamed in the which is always standing for Home Omice blue book, "Criminal larger and more expensive Statistics For 1937," published re- battleships.
The rate of lawlessness is halved! In the case of Germany the by the age of 10, however, and ingenuity of Dr. Scharht has halved again at 30. Buccecded in shrouding the
BURGLARS OF 14 This steady decrease of crime with public finances in a veil of com- plete mystery. No one knows age is an indiention of the success of the policy of dealing with young the total amount of the re-offenders in such a way that they habitual into not turned venues, or the amount of public are borrowing, or how much from criminals. either source is spent on arma- Young people are now responsible ment. But we have it from the for three-quarters of the cases of breaking and entering. Of the 9,081 Nazis that they will never persons found gulity in 1937 20 per tolerate material hindrance to cent, were under 14.
the execution of their "great
Of the 805.360 persons
"found
economic tasks" arising from guilty" in the year, 00 per cent, came
of
up in traffle cases, 10 per cent, were any kind of breakdown
guilty of erimes, and the rest ap- financing.
peared for drunkenness, betting or The greatest of these "econa-breach of by-laws, - mic tasks" is, of course, that of 82425, compared with $3,100 In meeting the bill for armaments. 1032.
Drunkenness convictions totalled
By Lichty
"Land here we are in the tomb of the ancient Egyptians. To your left you its old Egypt an inscriptions to your right, the carved Initials of last season's tourista!"
rumours that the protectorate was to be turned into an annexation started talk of a European war. When France begun to make a big naval base at Bizerta alarmed British Jingocs cried that this: meant the end of Britain in the Mediterranean, the cutting of our route to India: Salisbury's {(ruft comment was. "So long as we have command of sea, Bizerta doesn't matter. If we were to lose that command it would matter still lessi
But the main trouble was the status of the still rapidly growing Italian colony. They had, under a treaty of 1880, right to keep their Italo nationality and their own Institutions.
hat treaty was ended by the French in 1983, and a new one was made. That again was ended in 1918 and only renewed subject to quarter's notice. Since then, trouble, and trouble and trouble,
D
THE Italiana complain that every form of pres- sure and persuasion is used to induce Italian citizens to become naturalised, that those who refuse are subjected to all kinds of unfair discrimination.
They complain that they are from building new prevented schools for the growing number of Italian chlidren. They complain оп Immigration. of restrictions
hundred They
complain of things.
The French, on their side, com- plain of interference from with- out. The Italians in Tunis. they say, would prefer themselves to be-- come Tunisian citizens: propa- ganda, threats, thinly disguised bribery are used to keep them. Italian "a dangerous and dis- loyal element in the state, which so far from being ill-treated, is in fact too privileged,
д
At best and with goodwill it is no easy question. There is much of reason and of right on both sides.
And the size of the Italian colony formidable. French makes it
• statistics give D4.000 Italians, as against 105.089 French (which in- clude many naturalised Italians)., The Italian Government claims that there are 120,000 Italians registered in the Tunis consulate.
Either way, the figure shows the magnitude and diMculty of the problem.
So, whereas there is, in reality, no such thing as a "Nice question" or a Corsienn question." there is, between France and Italy, a quite real and troublesome Tunisian question which some day has got to. be settled.
SIGNOR MUSSOLINI and M. Laval got very acar a saltlement four- years ago: but it was not ratified. and it fell to pieces in the turmoli of the Abyssinian War.
But the fact that there is a Tunisian question is one thing. The shrill claim of the Fascist demonstrators that Tunts is of right Italian is quite another. On. no grounds in the world has italy any vestige of right or vestige of claim to possession of Tunis,
Tunisian nationalists (it in growing movement) may say that France has no right either-unless But that is might is right,
another story.
And Tunisian nationalists have
They
no love for Italy and no bellet in Italian log of the Arabs. live too near to Tripoli to have any Auch illusion:
To-day's Thought.
ta alware THE truth
"strongest, argument.
—BOPHOCLES.
the