1941-02-06 — Page 7

CHINA MAIL Thomas Mann's Xmas

,is

WINDSOR HOUSE

ITALY'S DESTINY

It

To Germans

Appeal To

German People:

The Christinas

your own

unfor-

The situation in the Mediterranean becomes every day increasingly in-

easy to come by, though your, German or Christian-has piled hero? I doubt not you will obey, feast teresting, more especially

comes masters in your name have plun-up all round its borders? Tell me, for your submissiveness is bound- round once more a feast beloved,dered the Continent they have how do since Hitler has not, be-a teast of love, to you the dearest overrun.

these deeds harmonise 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. Tell me how threats

by are singing with your children, | every day harder to forgive, grance and sweet childhood their light do the deeds look to 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, ed the most German of all feasts; forced you as a nation to commit longer sing the old songs?

well-nigh indication as to his

certainly no pcople celebrates it in the last year? How do they stead of "Holy Night," have they let us say, your credulity. You 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 Mediterranean area.

may be because its profounder, liberately have made you guilty thirsty

sing the blood- believe a miserable forger of his- party hymn of hate, EL religious, cosmic meaning sym- | or, the fathomless misery and hodgepodge of street more han

a songs and, tory, counterfeit possi-balises the beginnings, and mirrors human anguish which National | cheap

conqueror, 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 dawn where all those values you a world bacle has greatly upset his five, pagan time it was the feast

will have perished that make not calculations and that he the winter solstice, the rebirth

only a Christian e Christian but quite simply a human being a human being: I mean justice, free- dom and truth. You believe hith when he says that he, the map of the millennia, is come to put himself in Christ's place and to substitute for the 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 muster-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 unhely fana- ticism you go

fighting on, ber- serker-like, for this hideous new order--for a world, that is, where- 1 felt a little ashamed of my and love would be

in to celebrate the feast of peace surge of relief.

a far worse blasphemy even than it is to-day.

ה

of light out of wintry darkness, the breaking of new work- dawn. Next the new light becamg a Babe In the cradle, became the feast

became the birthday of the Savi- our and Son of Man, whose great, gentle heart gave to the world a new feeling for humanity, a new morality who called His Father in heaven the Father of all men

is hesitating as to the new line he should adopt. When the attempted in-manger at Bethlehem; the vasion of Greece was first undertaken it seemed to create confusion of thought as to the reason, but with the passing of time it is becoming in- creasingly clear

The history of this feast Is your Italy's ill-starred adven-history. There was no real, true ture had been hatched by t shone also upon you; until Germany until the light in the the two major conspira-Christian humanity penetrated the tors at Brenner Pass. It primitive, pagan, Germanic world | was to have been the first step in Hitler's drive to- wards Syria.

that!

and brought your moral and re- igious sense, your perceptions of the universe, into contact 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 St. Paul's: from

points. that I worked out the cardinal I settled my singularly heavy tin hat on my head prepared to be blown at any mu-

ment 100 feet into the street.

and

Save for a distant railway light and the green and scarlet crosses Occidental Christian civilisation.

on the traffic standards, the dark- To that civilisation you belong; ness was complete. The whirr of you celebrate when you set up the cradle of theme that a 'plane was overhead; a your membership car half a mile away canvinced Bar under the lighted tree and distant train announcing its ap- adoring shepherds and kings. At the same time you celebrate the glorious contributions made by the Germanic spirit to and through

he culture of Occidental Chris-ach to a tunnel assured

that a whistling bomb had fallen just behind my left ear.

rut at His feet the images of the

tianity; the works of Duerer and

Bach, Schiller's poems of freedom, Goethe's "Iphigenie," "Fidelio," the Ninth Symphony.

So now once more you prepare

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 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 thought that the small the presents: they will be rather Grecian Army, however sparse, for good things are not

brave and

for the Christian, the Germanic,

fenst, for the second time in the

Your present leaders have foisted upon yout and the world. Grieving, many of you, for sons

By Guy Ramsey

me

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

"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.

and fathers perished in the on- slaught upon your neighbours; heavy-hearted surely all of you at the thought of how long this Faintly came a pop. Three new is to go on and to what it will ruddy stars flickered for an ins- few

come at the last. You lay out

tant in a patch of sky where no stars had been before, then van-- ished.

wheeling,

my head

his voice.

the

"A breadbasket." "Hampstead?"

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

"Anybody in it?" "My family."

Minutes passed. From the East

"I'd give the alarm if I were you," came more gun-fire, rolling up in a thick crescendo of detonation. said the expert.

"So soon?" "Oh, yes.

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

My finger jabbed the bell; 1 could hear it clanging in the shal 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 misere."

Flashes of yellow and white spettered 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."

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

For

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 triumph. say, look much like a Yet he tells you this, so that you indis- your fate may consider solubly bound up with his own--a fate sealed, indeed, when the con- fidently awaited end arrives and his fine-laid schemes suffer ship- wreck. In that highly probablo event, the kindest thing that can happen to him is that his name But you? But be quite forgot. you yourselves? So it would be the end of you, the end of your Existence as Germans, were not this man, but rather reason and No! human decency, to prevail? A new beginning of German life it would be, the winter solstice, Searchlights sent silver fingers

new living, new hope, new joy! in our not the National- determined, fighting so that the ap

stabbing into the sky, crossing, "Well, you follow the search- Socialist-new order, of justice would be able to domin- pearance

weaving, clicking off lights, follow the gun-flashes, and the common weal, of respon- of German like matches blown out, leaving follow his note as well as ate the field to the extent planes in

the darkness blacker than before. can, discount

you sibility for all, a new order for Mussolini's

the wind, realise which a socially regenerate Eng- it has.

A brilliant blaze of light made that Mussolini had former sphere of action

every one of those Little land fights, and with her a richly turn as on a swivel: squibs that go off in the afr resourceful world, you will find not anticipated any great would not

"A big gun?" I said. necessarily

makes quite a number of cubic your proper place "Summer lightning," said

that "place resistance and he has

yards of sky uninhabitable and in the sun" which no one can at- mean that Germany had expert. I could hear his smile in use your judgment." thereby fallen into the shouldered Italy's burden.

tain by shrouding the world in "What's that?" I cried. as a terroristic darkness. In this new trap which greed some- It may also be that Hitler

red light burned steadily for a order opportunities for self- moment or two, travelling fast. times spreads before the is weighing the possibility

"Well, it might be a fighter feet of the would-be vic-l of a combined Italo-Ger-

one of ours; or it might be Jerry The flashes on the herizon grew | trying to pretend he's one of our tor. He underestimated man air and submarine in intensity and number. Sud- fighters. It's not very easy to the strength of

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

The guns The momentary stars leaped into uprcar, "Yes: enemy, with the result set to British victories in grew dazzling: one could not at pretence didn't get him

least I could not that Italy is engaged in a North Africa.

distinguish | much, did it?" between the reports of the guns Another spotter nudged major conflict on two Whatever the immedi- and the detonations of the shells. "You ought to have been herevives the profound desire to be

I could not identify a flash fronts and is facing ser- ate future may bring to land with a star-burst in the sky grate in mid-air

on when we saw that 'plane disinte- over Victoria ious disturbances at light, one thing stands Bewildered, I tried to isolate one Station a few days ago," he said, home.

single flash and listen for its shell "It's dull to-night, very dull.” out clearly and that is to explode. Impossible. The immediate ques- Italy's day as an Empire Sharp crackle and dull bang, sudden, high-pitched pop 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.

seen 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, cussion, it sang; shrill, clear, sky with pallor, and seen 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 Ulusion of sought to cause were conquered; know, 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 căime bang am 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 possly New fingers of few hhhd's inter- cliches) at its faming fall, I had which your leaders are driving laced in the sky, like spoken of a seen admittedly at a distance you to starve and dié. Never wifi plans. No other considera- many Italians as well. wheel they focussed and centred 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 a world suffer it that peace, when it and as Hitler has always connive at this

bomb (it says boom, not crump) comes--and it is longed for by last there was silence,

they broke away again. Then

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 barely connected the flash with you can, if you will, multiply ten- ed probable that German hope of retaining some

the sand.

fold the sum of human agony. troops will not take part semblance of an authority expert. "He's heading north."

"He's turned away," said the "Very dull" — the phrase was which by your credulous submis- in the actual fighting, which he has so thorough- dwells the better part of my life, quite seriously.

not spoken with the usual affecta- | siveness you have already brought Northerly lies Hampstead, where tion of the Briton in danger, but about. But in the fullness of time Bomber and fighter parti- ly abused, would be to ac- without sound the clouds above

'thò 'measure will be the mcasura' What was even more .remarkɩ of your own ngony. And how, at cipation however, is not cept the role of an Italian that suburb seamed to grow sud-ably was that as I returned to the end of all the madness, things strictly allied to troop Quisling.

denly luminous. "More lighting?" the safety of the shelter, I did not will be in Germany of that one- I said.

L' shiver: I was warm,

cannot bear to think...

+

to

*

realisation, for the satisfaction of your deepest needs, will be open to you, quite different from those in the world of slaves, where your role would be that of chief slave: the satisfaction, for instance, of a The very German need, the need to very

be loved. Do we not all know that underneath all the misdeeds you me, have been led into there still sur-

loved? Do we not know that it does not make you happy at all to act as the enemy of mankind that at bottom you find it -a desperate and frightful mísery?

: