1940-12-27 — Page 59

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THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, DECEMBER 27, 1940.

Page

Briton, The Poor Fool!

"It's a year ago to-day," said casual creatures, like David and Mrs. Stendy, looking up at her the other boys, girls like my sister-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."*

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

"All the soldiers on the roads, and the traffic lights down to al- most nothing ." said Ger- aldine Steady. "It might be hundred years!"

.

3

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

Miss

re-

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

Miss tonic

By

Kathleen Conyngham Greene, O.B.E.

said "What you mean," Steady, "is that there's a in personal danger. That's why of Eastshire and Northeastshire, is National proud of being in the front line people ride the Grand and shoot rapids and so on, I sup- of the Battle of Britain.

There is little that the High pose. We're all getting that tonic,

too. Command of the Royal Air Force and personal responsibility, It's doing us a world of good!" could tell us about air fighting

Smalltown, with the other towns that we do not feel we know and villages of Southshire, and in some respects better than they

do! 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.

.!"

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

Mr. Bunn, the baker, had the "That's a German And then, to a sound of a diff- bomb one night. The very next front of his shop sliced off by a erent timbre-

day there was a big poster nail- "That's the

ed up on the one wall left stand- him!"

ing:-

Hurricanes after

The Briton, poor fool, his enem- ies say, will never agree that he's beaten. He-and she won't even agree to be frightened! When planes are swooping, and mach- ine-gunfire is rattling, over the roofs of Smalltown, old Mrs. Stiff

Mussolini's Dream

"There are so many things one's The name of Graziani, Musso- General of the forgotten," went on Mrs. Steady, lini's Governor turning the pages of her book. Italian North African colony "Got battery for electric torch at|Libya, brings curses to the lips of last.' The worst battery famine every Arab, whether he is in his was in November. Then about the tent in the Syrian desert or sip- cold.

Wasn't that dreadful ping coffee in the bazaars of Tunis

theor Algiers. winter like the vigil before uccolade of knighthood? How our

The Arabs everywhere, feel un- fighting airmen are winning their dying hate for the man who, to spurs! 'Heard that Nazis had in-

crush their resistance to his before breakfast tyranny in Libya, took sheikhs of vaded Holland from the chimney sweep .

noble birth into the air and threw "I hope they got no breakfast,"

them from aeroplanes to crash to murmured Geraldine, "but I ex-death among their tribal follow- pect they did!"

"'David's leave over." I won- der?"

David Steady was one of those fighting nirmen. It wus a pity

for his Mother to wonder 100 much about him.

"I hope you put down the little things," said Miss Steady. "Pri-

warning

by

Basil Matthews

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

When "ll day long the noise of battle rolls," Smalltown house- 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. Mts. Steady's golden cocker spantel, 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 a great mass-colonisation scheme. In 1938 he transported twenty Mussolini's Imperialism

is the thousand Italian peasants on six- Fascist passion for of

E self-suffi-

"Private diaries are history," teen steamships from Italy to cient Italy, or to use the word said Mrs. Steady, meditatively, Libya and settled them all with invented by the Dictators

an looking down at her book. "If any in twenty-four hours in eighteen "autarky". The menace of econo- grandchildren of mine should read 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 pride. written about the war. and animal

Here's 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 Abyssinia, would ed. Took coat and shoes to Mrs. theoretically go some way towards Chatter whose clothes were bur- making her independent of inted. But then I've said, G. and I ports.

to bridge club.'

"On

Saturday The third motive for colonising much fighting all day over the I've written Libya is that of strategic security.

town. Watched great air battle Obviously if some

hundred above Wightport in boxroom. thousand sturdy and prolific pea- Balloon hit. Saw Nazi bombers sants, owning their own farms in falling. The grandchildren might Libya and, therefore, keen on de- think that was interesting. fending that territory, are living "But what about 'Cinema in on the soll of Africa immediately evening'? Of course it was that opposite to Sicily and the toe of war film about the lighthouse Italy, Italy's strategic position in men, and there wasn't an air raid the Mediterranean is much warning till we got home. I stronger.

shouldn't like anyone who reads the diary to feel we were dreadful people,. playing 'bridge and going to the cinema, while we were fighting for civilisation!"

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.

vate diaries are history. The first

Graziani succeeded as Gover- time we saw the balloons over

nor Italo Balbo, whose mysterious the first air raid death in on air-crash cast suspi- Wightport

doesn't that seem

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

a rald on.'

"

we

on

the the

Balbo's Colony

water for irrigation from artesian

wells sunk fifteen hundred feet beneath the Libyan sand.

Balbo thus began to create, be- hind the narrow fringe of fer- tity on the thousand mile coast line of Libya, a new Africa, His death ended his work, Italy in

and Graziani began the other sort of Empire-building-the sort that Mussolini

-- ű prefers

brutal tyranny.

The Population Problem The Mantle Of Caesar

But Mussolini still values the have mass-colonisation idea.

Balbo was a very different type from Graziani, and would

force

in

The fourth driving His first

the Italian adventure of colonisa- tion in North Africa with all the others.

the first time some- | done much more to give Italy a motive for this is to find space for one said I'll come if there isn't real Empire, based on sound meth- Italy's swiftly growing population. ods of development. Mussolini Her increase is at the rate of 400,- "There were other first times, sent him to Libya in order to 000 a year. Mussolini, by finan- inducements, in- too," said Mrs. Steady, dreamily. put him into the background; for cial and other "The first time I realised that this Balbo's exploits in the air had cites the Italian people to have isn't just a fight between our- inade him the adored hero of the more babies, and at

same the Italian people selves and our Allies, and

a potential time, utters curses because there and Germans; that if we were beaten rival to the Duce.

is inadequate room for them on it would be the end of all decent

Balbo didn't accept his gover- Italian soil. existence. I was frightened when norship of Libya as exile. He 1 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

the

“Don't you worry!” said Geral-

is tied up dine.

"The Germans are telling their own people now that all this It is the motive that appeals soj part of England is a heap of smok- much to the imagination of Mus- ing ruins. If you and I are alive solini, who sleeps every night with at all we ought to be gibbering the famous book "The Mantle of with terror underground! As we

alive, Caesar" by his bedside; it is the are

and living normal. motive of prestige, the passionate cheerful lives in a comfortable desire to make the Mediterranean | house, why shouldn't your future The Libyan colonisation is the lake of a new Roman Empire grandchildren, and the historians step towards the answer, but it is whose frontiers might

even go of the future, be able to read the only a small step.

truth?" down to the, marches of India.

...........OBACCOLO

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