1941-03-13 — Page 23

THE CHINA MAIL, MARCH 13, 1941.

CHINA MAIL

-WINDSOR HOUSE

THE CHALLENGE

Nazi

Germany must

hurry. Already many

American

joined

'planes have

the operational

units of the R.A.F. and, now the Lend and Lease Bill is through, steadily such aid will increase. President Roosevelt's plan removes all financial ob- 'stacles. He recently show- ed in a couple of sentences that he understands the . meaning of total war. "No major war ever has been won or lost," he says, "for lack of money.

The more We produce, the stronger we are." Those are the precepts on which Hitler worked and trium- phed. He knows what giant strength America! can wield once she braces her muscles on such wise instructions.

Mater

SKATING ON 'THIN ICE

JAPANESE MADE AGREEMENT

JAPAN: "What's the trouble. It's as safe as

CZZZ

а Japantee guarant co can make it."

Of The

It all comes back to the Atlantic. Hitler can only hope to win by assault; on Britain before our ab- solute mastery is restored in that sea. And the bat- tle of the Atlantic in turn will be fought in our fac- tories. More 'planes to help our ships, more bombers to blast his inva- sion ports and strike the weapons from his hands, more tonnage from our

One auspicious April in the shipyards, Britain

1889 two men were born, your one in an Austrian town-ship call- standing erect while full ed Braunau, the other in the East End of London. One was chris- American production

toned Adolf Schicklgruber, the comes to our side. This is other Charles Spencer Chaplin, the summons. We must Both had genius and their rise to it as we rose toarnes (slightly modified to suit

Sign Double

tion.

the demands of publicity) were meet the same intimate destined to become better known peril after Dunkirk. When than any other of their genera- we have divided those fig- ures of shipping losses by ten we shall have victory! in our grasp.

Both tasted poverty following the death of their fathers, but one

showed his talents early and brought money to his mother be- fore the age of ten, while the other moped at his mother's side and later begged his bread through the streets of Vienna. One was

MYSTERY AIR FORCE making his first motion picture in

What has happened to the Italian air force? Ans- wer that conundrum and you may have discovered a fact of considerable im- portance.

Hollywood when the other was ture postcards, still failing to sell his faked pic-

Neither forgot those early days of trial, One learnt to detest poverty. The other learnt to hate the poor.

By

Cross

Michael Foot

forbade the mention of his Vienna days, returned only with the smack of vengeance on his lips, and never spent a penny in his years of triumph to reward the old comrade who had shared with him back in Vienna his last hunk of bread,

One virtues.

ante-room

was

with jackboot and sword. He loved laughter, and Hitler had stifled laughter in countless homes across whole nations.

tne

He has taken up the challenge. He has answered in the best way he knows. He has answered with biggest, bonniest, stickiest, shimiest custard pie ever shied by the most expert pie-shier in the history of slapstick,

Page T

cause he sticks to his own busi-

ness he says some things which need to be said which only he can say perfectly, things which some of us forgot in these years gone by, and portly because we forgot them we were landed in this mess, There will be a few of these of- fenders among those lords and indies. I would like to watch them, If their hides and skulls were only thinner, I would like to be there to see them squirra. See Adenoid Hynkel, dictutor of Tornanias, addressing the mol beneath the Sign of the Double Cross, shout- ing, choking, shrieking, splutter- ing until the very microphone re- coils in horror before the avalan- che, whipping muss enthusiasm and maniac shouts with the re- frain that Jews, Liberty, Europe, Democracy, the foes of Tomanias, all these may be dismissed with one incomprehensible word de vised from Hitler's example and Chaplin's genius- shtunk. Wers the arguments of our own little Hitlers any better? Hate all for- eigners! Parlement was a talking shop! Perish Judah! Deinocracy was a hoax, every bit of it! Liberty stank.

Do you remember these buf- Tools who wanted nothing better than t Darch in processions, shout when they were told to, but always together, and consign to oblivion argument, denate, criti- cisin and all those things which distinguish citizens trom seris? See Beuzini Napolini, dictator of Bacteria (yes, he gets bis pie square across the eyeballs), argu- ing and ranting with his dear, be- loved Adenoid and almost start- ing an international crisis by claiming that his barber Charr must be higher. See Adenoid himself dancing a balloon dance with a globe map and collapsing into feurs when the balloon bursts in his hands.

Charlie certainly makes them look silly. But, cfter all, didn't romeone tell us that Benzini Na- polini was a flue Christian gentle- man? (Or was that about some- body else?)

At least, didn't one or two of our womanish admirers of dictator- ship hail Napolini as a great and constructive statesman, a man of iron who made the trains run to time (ure they still running) and kept the workers in their proper place? Did not someone write a pamphlet (is it still circulating?) applauding the abracadabra which Benzini disguised under the title of Fascist corporations? And did not they tell us that Benzini and Adenoid together could go on bal- loon dancing with the world with- gut a final bust?

tailor who went to the war, fired See, Anally, the little Jewish his gun the wrong way, got into the wrong 'plane

army. flew his air upside-down, memory for twenty years and re- lost his

turned incredulous and unabash- ed to face the brutal, ridiculous Gestapo. See the little Jewish girl whom he befriended.

We can see it all now, 'Charlie Chaplin is not, I remember hearing years ago suppose, himself a Jew,

as many people that Charlie Chaplin

but he was go- has chosen the Jewish tailor and ing to make a film about Hitler. his girl to speak as the champions

Moloch and all

Will there be any whose sides he

vas than the

who

but shameful anti-

England should

Both profited from their up I felt a faint tingle of excitement of all men who suffered beneath bringing.

learnt to excite men's

at the pit of my stomach, Millions the Nazi The other dis- covered how abjectly men could felt the same. Tens of thousands among

of people in every land must have would defy it. be ruled through their vices. One

those had learnt the meaning of love of people in the city alone, after tickles who will go back to their and pity and tolerance and pathos, they had heard the good news, drawing-rooms and still jabber The other had mastered hate and travellers on the other side of the Semitism?

must have baffled their fellow-their mild derision and contempt.

Tube with an unconscious smile, When the war ended one already

snigger, grin or guflaw apparently an international figure, provoked by nothing more jovial while the other was still an un- than a London Transport station One remembered his debt to known political spy paid by the map. his old comrades and liked to re-

Our trust in Charlie German army. A dozen years something much surer turn to the

have vounted schoolroom of his later one toured almost The size of air forces is amuse the children,

youth and perform his antics to capital city in the world, and was his Fuehrer. Then came the blow. still the most harshly-treated of every stormtrooper's goat-like faith in her alliance with the first and The other mobbed

by cheering, laughing Some oaf in America was appar often niggardly in our sympathy. Hitler's enemies. Instead, we were the most closely guarded resolved on nothing but revenge, multitudes. He was thrilled of military secrets. No one

so many happy faces. The other should not tamper with politics, in England who whispered Hitler's by ently protesting that Hollywood Indeed, there were even some was attracting vast can be certain and guesses

multitudes We knew it. We had these oats of too. He roared and yelled at our own, pompous little asses who mystical nonsense of ruce. Perhaps faith. They accepted his may be far wide of the doubt may be due to the them from the platform, but in snooped into our own music halls after all, they said, the Jews only mark. Italy was estimated acknowledged superiority would boast how shrewdly he had a dirty crack by Max Miller was

afterwards he and would be telling us next that got their deserts. in 1938 to possess more]

of the British pilot. In all drawn "the magnet across this causing tension in

Charlie Chaplin should shame the Inter- than two thousand good, individual combats since

national Settlement at Shanghai. Jew the place of honour in his them. He has given to the little Little did they realise that censor- usable machines and from Italy entered the war he

ship at the Holborn Empire. would greatest masterpiece, that day to the outbreak has displayed his prowess

rob the British people of one of excelled all his former services to He has done inorg still. He has the best platforms, where political our kind. He has taken all the of war Italian factories over the Italian even more

Now, ten years later still, one reputations are made and broken, doctrines of dictatorship, all the were presumably busy re. Surely than over his Ger- of civilised mankind. "The mean-roe Doctrine and the film Moguls degrade the dignity of man and has become the recognised enemy And now it seemed that the Mondoctrines of regimentation which pairing the losses inflicted man rival. There are also est man in all the world, as he together were to condemn in Abyssinia and Spain some indications that part gained the power to unleash his be allowed to bait the foreman

was once properly described, has cinema to inanity. Charlie was to that they are.

the has exposed them for the shams and profiting from experi-] of the Italian air force is hatred against his fellow men on and bespatter his boss, but never | the individual against the mon- He has asserted the rights of ence in these two theatres. being re-equipped to en-ruined lives and billions of tears neath the worst and most mam-throned, but to which some even a continental scale. Millions of to pull the throne away from be- strous gospel which Hitler En- Yet Britain's mastery of able it to face better the are his harvest.

mcth imposture among the air in the Mediterran- superior British machine.

men, in this land have been ready to The other watched all

Those were anxious days, but we bend the knee. Charlie will laugh ean and Middle East has But is that all? We are so as a challenge to himself. He was

events and must have seen them can afford to forget them. It has the nonsense out of them. And

come at last. been practically undisput- armoured now against all the supreme individualist and Hit-

perhaps we shall not live in a civilised world until this film can ed.

kinds of wishful thinking er had sworn eternal war against

be shown in ** demanded the that we rightly search for right

overy capital city before mulitudes who sit with think and feel How can we explain the any other less comfortable for themselves."

good cons.ences and laugh them- He was mystery? Part of it no explanation.

the master of pathos and Hitler He is a custard nie exnert and not

Charlie Chaplin is no politician. selvas sick. was hacking all pity to shreds even a philosopher. Yot Just be

“London Evening

dunghill,"

those who

to

15

those

12

I w

I G

From the Standard," December 10, 1940.