1941-02-06 — Page 39

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THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 6, 1941.

Page

CHINA MAIL Thomas Mann's Xmas

WINDSÓR HOUSE

ITALY'S DESTINY

The situation in the Mediterranean becomes every day increasingly in-

is

To Germans

Appeal To

German People: .

23

unfor-

conqueror,

easy to come by, though your, German or Christian-has piled | hero" 1 doubt rot you will obey, teresting, more especially round once more, a feast beloved. dered the

The Chistmas feast comes

masters in your name have plun-up all round its borders? Tell me.

Continent they have how do

for your submissiveness is bound- since Hitler has not, be-a feast of love, to you the dearest

these deeds harmonise overrun. But the Christmas with the beautiful old hymns you less and grows, let me tell you, yond vague

feast of all, full of light and fra- candles burn. threats

Tell me how by are singing with your children, every day harder to forgive. grance and sweet childhood their light do the deeds look to your own against Britain, given any dreams.

hearts full of sweet, Indeed, it might be call you which your leaders

have childlike emotion? Or do you no Boundless, well-nigh indication

ed the most German of all feasts; forced you as a nation to commit longer sing the old songs? as to his

curtainly no people celebrates it in the last year? How do they stead of "Holy Night," have they let us say, your credulity.

In-givable, is your trust-or, rather, next move in the with such fervour as you. That look, all the vilenesses they de ordered you to sing the blood-

You Mediterranean area.

It may be because its profounder, liberately have made you guilty thirsty party hymn of hate, believe a miserable forger of his-

religious, cosmic meaning sym- or, the fathomless misery and hodgepodge of street more than

songs and

tory, a counterfelt possi-bolises the beginnings, and mirrors human anguish which National cheap tabloid propaganda that when he tells you that through ble that the Italian de- the development of your civilisa-Socialist

Germany-a Germany take an obscure good-for-nothing him and through tion as a people. In the primi- no longer permitted to be either and make out of him a mythical shall down where all those values you a world bacle has greatly upset his five, pagan time it was the feast calculations and that he

will have perished that make not only a Christian a Christian but is hesitating as to the new

quite simply a human being a line he

human being: I mean justice, free- should adopt. a Babe in the cradle, became the

dom and truth. You believe him When the attempted in-manger at Bethlehem: the

when he says that he, the man feast

of the millennia, is come to put vasion of Greece was first our and Son of Man, whose great, became the birthday of the Savi-

himself in Christ's place and to substitute for the undertaken it seemed to gentle heart gave to the world a create, confusion

new feeling for humanity, a new morality who called His Father

of

of light out of wintry darkness, of the winter solstice, the rebirth the breaking

of a new world- dawn. Next the new light became

thought as to the reason, in heaven the Father of all men. but with the passing of. time it is becoming in- creasingly clear

that

The history of this feast is your There was no real true the

with

Roof Spotter

I shivered. The dark night air bit into me and the stars seemed to tingle with cold when I open- ed the door to the roof, climbed the steep stair to the Crow's Nest, and began my first trick as Roof Spotter (acting, auxiliary, unpaid). I identified SL Paul's: from that I worked out the cardinal

points. I settled my singularly heavy tin hat on my head and prepared to be blown at any mo-

ment 100 feet into the street.

Save for a distant railway light and the green and scarlet crosses

"A breadbasket.”

"Hempstead?"

gospel of the brotherhood of man in God the code of body and soul destroying force. You believe him when he says you are the master-folk, called to the creation of a "new order," where all the other peo- ples shall toil for you, as slaves. And as slaves of his unholy fana- ticism you go fighting on, ber- serker-like, for this hideous new order for a world, that is, where- I felt a little ashamed of my and love would he

in to celebrate the feast of peace surge of relief.

a for worSØ blasphemy even than it is to-day.

"No. A bit West." The expert coughed. "In fact, if he's not got my house now, he'll never it!"

"Anybody in it?" "My family."

get

Minutes passed. From the East came more gun-fire, rolling up in a thick crescendo of detonation.

Italy's ill-starred adven-history. ture had been hatched by Germany until the light in

East shone also upon you; until the two major conspira-Christian humanity penetrated the tors at Brenner Pass. It primitive, pagan, Germanic world and brought your moral and re- was to have been the first ligious sense, your perceptionɛ of

the universe, into contact step in Hitler's drive to- Occidental Christian civilisation. on the traffic standards, the dark- wards Syria.

To that civilisation you belong; ness was complete. The whirr of you celebrate your membership a car half a mile away convinced when you set up the cradle of theme that a 'plane was overhead, I'd give the alarm if I were you," Bato under the lighted tree and distant train announcing its ap- put at His feet the images of the adoring shepherds and kings. At the same time you celebrate the glorious contributions made by the Germanic spirit to and through the culture of Occidental Chris- Bach, Schiller's poems of freedom, Goethe's "Iphigenie," "Fidelio," the Ninth Symphony.

flanity; the works of Duerer and

Mussolini has always been obsessed with the idea of gaining control of Greece and the strategic island of Crete both would be of inestimable value in the Eastern Medi- terranean push and this ambition coinciding with Hitler's own particular feast, for the second time in the plans, the momentous war step was taken. The world has been watching the re- sult. The Grecian cam- paign was conceivably not well mounted but few thought that the small the presents: they will be rather Grecian Army, however sparse, for good things are not

home.

So now once more you prepare for the Christian, the Germanic,

your present leaders have foisted upon you and the world. Grieving, inany of you, for sons

and fathers perished in the on- slaught upon your neighbours: heavy-hearted surely all of you at the thought of how long this is to go on and to what it will come at the last. You lay out

By Guy Ramsey

proach to a tunnel assured

me

said the expert, "Su soon?" "Oh, yes.

When you hear him overhead, you're quite safe. Now's the time to sound it."

My anger jabbed the bell; 1 that a whistling bomb had fallen | could hear it clanging in the shel- just behind my left ear.

ter below, from where I stood. I knew for I had lived it down- stairs that men off duty looked up with humorous resignation and said: "The heat's on again, chaps, I'll try miserc."

On the far horizon, there was a pale flicker. "A bit cold for summer lightning?" I ventured The cool voice of the aerial ex- 1.art corrected me. "That's gun- fire."

But, above all, you believe that it would be the end of the Ger- man people, that it would be all over with them forever were they not to "win" this war. In other words, if they were not to follow a criminal madness through thick and thin and to the uttermost end ---an end which will not, I should say,

look much like a triumphi Yet he tells you this, so that you may consider

your fate indis- solubly bound up with his own—á fate sealed; indeed, when the con fidently awaited end arrives and his fine-laid schemes suffer ship- wreck. In that highly probable event, the kindest thing that can happen to him is that his name be quite forgot.

But you? you yourselves? So it would be the end of you, the end of your xistence as Germans, were not this man, but rather reason and human decency, to prevail? No! A new beginning of German life it would be, the winter solstice, new living, new hope, new joy! For in our-not the "Well, you

follow the search- Socialist-new order,

National- off lights, follow the

of justice gun-flashes, and the common weal, of respon

you sibility for all, a new order for

"I can't hear anything." "Just wait for a bit." I had forgotten in my excitement the difference between the speeds of light and sound.

Faintly came a pop. Three new ruddy stars Rickered for an ins- tant in a patch of sky where no stars had been before, then van- ished.

Searchlights sent silver Angers

stabbing into the sky, crossing,

Flashes of yellow and white spattered the sky. The whine of the 'plane was still audible as the expert said to me: "Give them the danger passed' he's going

away."

J

"How did you know?” I asked in a lull. I could still hear him.

But

of German like matches blown out, leaving follow his note as well as in Mussolini's the darkness blacker than before. can, discount the wind, realise which a socially regenerate Eng

that every one of those little land fights, and with her a richly squibs that go off in the air resourceful world, you will find makes quite a number of cubic your proper place that "place

A brilliant blaze of light made turn as on a swivel: "A big gun?" I said,

"Summer lightning," said

expert. I could hear his smile his voice.

the

in

use your judgment." yards of sky uninhabitable

and in the sun" which no one can at

tain by shrouding the world in

"What's that?" I cried. as a terroristic darkness. In this new

a

brave and determined, fighting so that the ap-wheeling, weaving, clicking would be able to domin- pearance ate the field to the extent planes it has. Mussolini had former sphere of action my head not anticipated any great would not necessarily resistance and he has mean that Germany had thereby fallen into

the shouldered Italy's burden. trap which greed some- It may also be that Hitler

red light burned steadily for order opportunities for sell mcment or two, travelling fast, times spreads before the is weighing the possibility

realisation, for the satisfaction of "Well, it might be a fighter — your deepest needs, will be opeh feet of the would-be vic- of a combined Italo-Ger-

one of ours; or it might be Jerry to you, quite different from those The flashes on the herizon grew trying to pretend he's one of our in the world of slaves, where your tor. He underestimated man air and submarine in intensity and number. Sud- fighters. It's not very easy to role would be that of chief slave; the strength of

denly the air seemed to All with pretend;, you know." the attack on Malta as an off- sound.

The guns the satisfaction, for instance, of a The momentary stars leaped into uprcar, "Yes: enemy, with the result set to British victories in least I could not distinguish much, did it?".

The very German need, the need to grew dazzling: one could not-at pretence didn't get him very be loved. Do we not all know that that Italy is engaged in a North Africa.

underneath all the misdeeds you. between the reports of the guns Another spotter nudged me, have been led into there still sur- major conflict on two Whatever the immedi-and the detonations of the shells. "You ought to have been

I could not identify a flash on when we saw that 'plane. disinte- loved? Do we not know that it here vives the profound desire to be fronts and is facing ser- ate future may bring to land with a star-burst in the sky grate in mid-air over Victoria | does not make you happy at all jous disturbances at light, one thing stands Bewildered, I tried to isolate one Station a few days ago," he said. to act as the enemy of mankind

single flash and listen for its shell "It's dull to-night, very dull." --that at bottom out clearly and that is to explode.

you find it a Impossible. The immediate ques- Italy's day as an Empire sudden, high-pitched pop

desperate and frightful misery? Sharp crackle. and dull bang, and tion and one that has builder has definitely shattering thunder, the barrage been agitating the world closed. Even more, Italian mighty ground-bass, piercing and hour we had five office warnings. grew and grew; and over this "Very dull and within an during the past few independence has vanish-soaring, came the high, sweet of "danger imminent" I had your souls by ceasing to give al- Germans, save yourselves! Save weeks is how far Ger- ed. Hitler may or may not note of a 'plane.

seon the great guns flashing in legiance to your task-masters, many intends to help her delay in assuming open E string amid a madness of per- had seen a breadbasket paint the and not of you at all! I live in Like a violin vibrating on the seven different spasms of light; who are thinking of themselves ally. Mussolini is well control of the country, Oussion, it sang; shrill, clear sky with pallor, and scen its re the world from which, though you aware that he will be sup- but that it is merely a to re-emerge with an illusion of sought to cause were conquered now, and I say to you, Never obscured by sheer mass of sound | flection dim as the fres it had belong to it, you are shut off!; I ported only in so far as question of time before he continuity. The searchlight shift- I had felt my heart contract (I will that world accept or tolerate assistance dovetails in does so is clear to all on- ing and blasting into

ed and new batteries came bang-ami sorry, but

emotion, real the "new order," the sub-human action, emotion, can be expressed only in terrorist Utopia for the sake of with Hitler's revised lookers and possibly to New fingers of new hands inter- cliches) at its flaming fall, I had which your leaders are driving plans. No other considera- many Italians as well. wheel they like spokes of a seen -- admittedly at a distance you to starve and die. Never will they focussed and gentred the spurt of light that means H.E. the great Christian peoples of the ****tion will influence him Whether Mussolini will and crossed, radiating from a hub; and heard the dull boom of world suffer it that peace, when it

and as Hitler has always connive at

they broke away again. Then bomb (it says boom, not crump) comes and it is longed for by this last there was silence.

travelling with intolerable slow- you, too shall be celebrated upon. tried to avoid a war on humiliating step is more

ness from its point of contact into the grave of freedom and human two fronts, it is consider than probable, as his only

my ears --- such slowness that I dignity. In the next few years harely connected the flash with you can, if you will, multiply ten- ed probable that German hope of retaining some

the sound.

fold the sum of human agony troops will not take part semblance of an authority

which by your credulous submis siveness you have already brought in the actual fighting which he has so thorough

about. But in the fullness of time Bomber and fighter parti ly abused, would be to ac-

the measure will be the" measure of your own agony. And how, at cipation however, is not cept the role of an Italian strictly allied to troop Quisling.

7

expert. "He's heading north,"

"He's turned' away," sold the

Northerly lies Hampstead, where without sound the clouds above dwell the better part of my life. that suburb seemed to grow sud- denly luminous, "More lightning?" I said,

"Very dull" the phrase was not spoken with the usual affecta tion of the Briten in danger, but quite seriously.

What was even more remark

able was that, as I returned to the safety of the shelter, I did not A shiver: I was warm,

the end of all the madness, things will be in Germany-of that one cannot bear to think.