1940-12-27 — Page 3

Briton, The Poor Fool!

and

"It's a year ago to-day," sald casual creatures, like David Mrs. Steady, looking up at hers the other boys, girls like my dister-in-law from a study of her Molly and Joan, in their hospitals diary pages, "that we drove into and ambulances, have such res- Grayminster to buy those black- ponsibility? Then came Dunkirk out curtains."

"All the soldiers on the roads, and the traffic lights down to ul- most nothing

said Ger- aldine Steady.

"It might be "hundred years!"

超

"It was the next night," sald Mrs. Steady, that I did my first spell of Air Raid Precautions duty. The day after that the first evnquee children came from Wightport, and you decided to stay with me. Smalltown hasn't been the peaceful refuge I pro- mised you, Geraldine!"

re-

"I feel like Nelson," said Miss Steady, defiantly. "Do you member that saying of his at one of the big ballies? 'I would not be elsewhere for thousands!* **

"There are so many things one's forgotten," went on Mrs. Steady, her book. turning the pages of "Got battery for electric torch at last,' The worst battery famine was in November. Then about the cold.

.. Wasn't that dreadful winter like the vigil before the accolade of knighthood" How our fighting airmen are winning their spurs! 'Heard that Nazis had in- vaded Holland before breakfast from the chimney sweep

"I hope they got no breakfast,' murmured Geraldine, "but I pect they did!"

ex-

"David's leave over I won-

der

a

David Steady was one of those fighting airmen. It Was pity for his Mother to wonder

too much about him.

"I hope you put down the little things," said Miss Steady. "Pri- vate diaries are history. The first time we saw the balloons over Wightport

the first air raid warning

doesn't that seem

time years ago? The first were woken up by gunfire the first camouflaged car first camouflaged house Terrace

we

the on the the first time some-

-By- Kathleen Conyngham Greene, O.B.E.

dol A distinguished Air Marshal has to be, almost forcibly, pro- has said that he cannot be sure of . pelled into the house by her the sound of a German bomber. family. There isn't a Smalltown man or woman who will not nod wisely towards a particular sort of over- Head droning.

"That's a German

Stiff, "that I can't see them pro- "I've got so blind," says Mrs. perly unless they fly really low."

Mr. Bunn, the baker, had the front of his shop sliced off by a And then, to a sound of a diff- bomb one night. The very next

erent timbre—

"That's the him!”

Hurricanes after

and the French collapse, and we knew we'd got to win the war by ourselves somehow, and it seemed to get easier."

said "What you mean,"

Mies Steady, "is that there's a tonic in personal danger. That's why of Eastshire and Northeastshire, is

National proud of being in the front line The Briton, poor fool, his enem- people ride the Grand and shoot rapids and so on, I sup- of the Battle of Britain.

ies say, will never agree that be's There is little that the High beaten. He-and she-won't even pose. We're all getting that tonic, and personal responsibility, too. Command of the Royal Air Force agree to be frightened/ When It's doing us a world of good!" could tell us about air

fighting planes are swooping, and mach- Smalltown, with the other towns that we do not feel we know

ine-gunfire is rattling, over the and villages of Southshire, and in some respects better than they roofs of Smalltown, old Mrs. Stiff

Mussolini's Dream

to

the Dictators

day there was a big poster nail- ed up on the one wall left stand- ing:-

"Who cares for Hitler? Bread and cakes as usual."

When "all day long the noise of Smalltown house- battle rolls," wives pick up their baskets and run out, between raids, to do their shopping.

Even the dogs seem to be im- bued with the same courage, Mrs. Steady's golden cocker spaniel, who hides under the table at the pop of a Guy Fawkes Day cracker, does not lift his head from his basket at the sound of far loud- er bangs.

The second driving force behind The name of Graziani, Musso- a great mass-colonisation scheme.

the In 1938 be 'transported twenty Mussolini's Imperialism is General of lini's Governor

the self-suff- thousand. Italian peasants on six- Fascist passion for a Italian North African colony bf

are "Private diaries

history," cient Italy, or to use the word said Mrs. Libya, brings curses to the lips of teen steamships from Italy

Steady, meditatively, every Arab, whether he is in his Libya and settled them all with invented by

an looking down at her book, "I any in twenty-four hours in eighteen "autarky". The menace of econo- grandchildren of mine should read tent in the Syrian desert or sip- ping coffee in the bazaars of Tunis hundred farm houses-all exactly mic sanctions, held over the head what I've written, they may think identical with one another, on of Italy during the Abyssinian it's terribly trivial. Of course I've farms provided not only in seed crisis. wounded Fascist

Here's pride. written about the war. and animal stock, but

also in Italy now plans that Libya shall last Friday-Bombs in Chestnut be a farm of the Roman Empire Street. Three small houses wreck - which, with

would ed. Took coat and shoes to Mrs. theoretically go some way towards | Chatter whose clothes, were dur- making her independent of ports.

or Algiers.

The Arabs everywhere feel un- dying hate for the man who, to crush their resistance -to his tyranny in Libya, took sheilths of noble birth into the air and threw them from aeroplanes to crash to death among their tribal follow- ers, and who beat others to death. He, too, it was who-forcibly transporting Libyan Arab tribes by the hundred thousand to de- sert areas, destroyed their flocks and herds-reducing their camels from 75.000 to 2,600, their sheep from 800,000 to 98,000 and their horses from 14,000 to 1,000.

Graziani succeeded as Glover nor Italo Balbo, whose mysterious death in an air-crush east suspi- cion on Graziani.

Balbo's Colony Balbo was a very different type from Graziani, and would have done much more to give Italy a

by

Basil Matthews

water for irrigation from artesian wells sunk fifteen hundred feet beneath the Libyan sand.

Abyssinia,

written

in-ied. But then I've said; G. and I

to bridge club.'

I've "On Saturday much fighting all day over the town.

Watched great air battle above Wightport inboxroom. Balloon hit. · Saw Nazi-bombers falling. The grandchildren tight think that was interesting.

The third motive for colonising Libya is that of strategic security. Obviously if some hundred Balbo thus began to create, be- thousand sturdy and prolific pea- hind the narrow fringe of fer- sants, owning their own farms in tility on the thousand mile coast Libya and, therefore, Keen on de- line of Libya, a new Italy infending that territory, are living Africa. His death ended his work, on the soil of Africa immediately and Graziani began the other sort opposite to Sicily and the toe of of Empire-building-the, sort that Italy, Italy's strategic position in Mussolini prefers U brutal the Mediterrancan is much tyranny.

stronger.

The Population Problem The Mantle Of Caesar

•

the His first

The fourth driving force the Italian adventure of colonisa- with all the others.

we

I

were

"But what about 'Cinema in evening'? Of course it..was that war film about the lighthouse men, and there wasn't an air raid warning till we

got home. shouldn't like anyone who reads the diary to feel we were dreadful people, playing bridge and going

while But Mussolini still values

to the cinema, infighting for civilisation!" mass-colonisation idea.

"Don't you worry!" said Geral- motive for this is to find space for

is tied up dine.

"The Germans are telling their own people now that all this Her increase is at the rate of 400,- 000 a year. Mussolini, by finan-

It is the motive that appeals so part of England is a heap of sinok- cial and other inducements, in-

much to the imagination of Mus- ing ruins. If you and I are alive cites the Italian

people to have solini, who sleeps every night with at all we ought to be gibbering more babies, and at

same the famous book "The Mantle of with terror underground! As

are alive, and living normal, time, utters curses because there Caesar" by his bedside; it is the

a comfortable is inadequate room for them on motive of prestige, the passionate cheerful lives in Italian soil,

desire to make the Mediterranean house, why shouldn't your future The Libyan colonisation is a the lake of a new Roman Empire grandchildren, and the historians even go of the future, be able to read the step towards the answer, but it is whose frontiers might

truth?" only a small step.

down to the marches of India.

one said I'll come if there isn't real Empire, based on sound meth- Italy's swiftly growing population, tion in North Africa

a raid on." ""

ods of developinent. Mussolini "There were other first times, sent him to Libya in order to 100," said Mrs. Steady, dreamily. put him into the background; for "The first time I realised that this Balbo's exploits in the air had isn't just a fight between our-made him the adored hero of the selves and our Allies. and the Italian people and potential Germans; that if we were beaten rival to the Duce. it would be the end of all decent

Balbo didn't accept his gover- existence. I was frightened when | norship of Libya as exile. He I saw that first, though I didn't set to work to improve flocks and let you know it, How could nice, herds, and he also carried through

a

the

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