1941-03-13 — Page 7

THE CHINA MAIL, MARCH 13, 1941.

CHINA MAIL

"WINDSOR HOUSE

THE CHALLENGE

Nazi Germany must hurry. Already many American 'planes have joined 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 whichị Hitler worked and trium-! phed. He knows whatį giant strength America) can wield once she braces her muscles on such wise instructions.

Mater

SKATING ON 'THIN ICE

JAPAN: "What's the trouble.

JAPANESE MADE AGREEMENT

It's as safe as a

Japanese guarantee can make it."

Sign Of The Double

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 shipyards, Britain one in an Austrian town-ship call- standing erect while full ed Braunau, the other in the East End of Londen, One was chris- American production tened Adolf Schickigruber, the comes to our side. This is other Charles Spencer Chaplin. the summons. We must rise to it as we rose to meet the same intimate peril after Dunkirk, When we have divided those fig-| ures of shipping losses by ten we shall have victory in our grasp.

One auspicious April in the

men 1889. two

were born,

year

their

Both had genius and names (slightly modified to suit the demands of publicity) were destined to become better known than any other of their

tion.

By

Cross

Michael Foot

the

forbade the mention of his Vienna days, returned only with gencra-smack of vengeance on his lips, and never spent a penny in his Both tasted poverty following years of triumph to reward the the death of their fathers, but one old comrade who had shared with showed his talents early and him back in Vienna his last hunk brought money to his mother be of bread. fore the ago of ten, while other moped at his mother's side and later begged his bread through the streets of Vienna. One was making his first motion picture in still failing to sell his faked pic ture postcards.

the

Both profited from their up-

One bringing.

learnt to excite men's virtues. The other dis- covered how abjectly, men could be ruled through their vices. One and pity. and tolerance and pathos, The other had mastered hate and derision and contempt.

Page

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 those years gone by, and partly because we forgot them we were larded 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 squirm. See Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of Tomanias, addressing the mob

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 maniae shouts with the re- fruin that Jews, Liborty, Europe, Democracy, the foes of Tomanias, all these may be dismissed with one incompréhensible word de- vised from Hitler's example and Were Chaplin's genius-shlunk.

the arguments of our own little Hitlers any better? Hate all for- eigners! Parliament was a talking Shop! Perish Judaht Democracy was a heax, every bit of it! Liberty stank.

to

Do you remember these buf- foons who wanted nothing better than t narch in processions, shout when they were told to, but always together, and consign rblivion argument, debate, criti- risan and all those things which distinguish citizens from seris! See Benzini Napolini, dictator of Bacteria (yes, he gets his μίν square across the eyeballs), argu- ing and ranting with his deer, be-. loved Adenoid and almost start- ing

by an international crisis claiming

chair that his barber must

Sce Adenoid be higher.

himself dancing a balloon dance with a globe map and collapsing into tears when the balloon bursts In his hands.

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

2

At least, didn't one or two of ou. womanish admirers of dictatur- ship bail Napolini as a great and constructive statesman, a man of iron who made the trains run to time (are they still running) and kept the workers in their proper place? Did not someone write pamphlet (is it still circulating?) applauding the abracadabra which Benzini disguised, under the title of Fascist corporations? And did with jackboet and

He not they tell us that Benzini and loved laughter, and Hitler | Adencia together. could go on bal- had stifled laughter in countless loon dancing with the world with- homes across whole nations.

the

sword.

out a Anal bust?

air

He has taken up the challenge.

See, finally, the little Jewish He has answered in the best way tailor who went to the war, fired he knows. He has answered with his gun the wrong way, got into

stickiest, the wrong. biggest, bonniest,

army, flew his upside-down, lost his slimiest custard pie ever shied by plane. the most expert pie-shier in the memory for twenty years and re- turned incredulous and unabash - history of slapstick.

ed to face the brutal, ridiculous Gestapo. See the little Jewish girl whom he befriended.

he

MYSTERY AIR FORCE mollywood when the other was bad learnt. The meaning, af. low; her id heard the good news, drawing-rooms, and still, Jabber

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

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

One remembered his debt to his old comrades and liked to re-

schoolroom turn to the

The

was

England should have vaunted her alliance with the first and still the most harshly-treated of Hitler's enemies, Instead, we were often niggardly, in our sympathy. Indeed, there were even some in England who whispered Hitler's faith, They. accepted his mystical nonsense of race, Perhaps

We can see it all now, Charlie Chaplin is nut, as many people I remember hearing years ago suppose, himself a Jew, but he that Charlie Chaplin was go has chosen the Jewish tailor and ing to make a film about Hitler. his girl to speak as the champions I felt a falnt tingle of excitement of all men who suffered beneath Moloch and all who at the pit of my stomach. Millions. the Nazi

Will there be any of people in every land must have would defy it. felt the same. Tens of thousands among those whose sides. of people in the city alone, after tickles who will go back to their must have baffled their fellow-their mild but shamolul anti- travellers on the other side of the Semitism? Tube with an unconscious smile, When the war ended one was snigger, grin or guffaw apparently already an international figure, provoked by nothing more jovial while the other was still an un- than a London. Transport station

Our trust in Charlie known political spy paid by the map.

A dozen German army.

years something much surer than the every stormtrooper's goat-like faith one toured almost of his later youth and perform his antics to capital city in the world, and was his Fuehrer. Then came the blow. The size of air forces is amuse the children.

other mobbed by cheering, laughing Some oaf in America was appar

multitudes. He was thrilled by lently protesting that Hollywood the most closely guarded resolved on nothing but revenge,

so many happy faces. The other should not tamper with politics was attracting vast multitudes We know it, We had these oals of of military secrets. No one

too. He roared and yelled at our own, pompous little asses who can be certain and guesses doubt may be due to the them from the platform, but in snooped into our own music that

the ante-room afterwards he and would be telling us next may be far wide of the mark. Italy was estimated acknowledged superiority would boast how shrewdly he had a dirty crack by Max Miller was

causing tension in the Inter national Settlement at Shanghai. in 1938 to possess more of the British pilot, In all drawn

dunghill,"

Little did thoy realise that censor- than two thousand good, individual combats since

ship at the Holborn Empire would

He has done inore still. He has rob the British people of one of excelled all his former services to usable machines and from Italy entered the war he

the best platforms where political our kind. He has taken all the that day to the outbreak has displayed his prowess

Now, ton years later still, one reputations are made and broken, doctrines of, dictatorship, all the of war Italian factories over the Italian even more

has become the recognised enemy. And now it seemed that the Mon- doctrines of regitnentation, which were presumably busy re- surely than over his Ger- of civilised mankind. "The mean roe Doctring and the film Moguls degrade, the digil of man und were to condemn the has exposed them for the shams pairing the losses.inflicted man rival. There are also est man in all the world," as he together

was once properly described, has cinema to inanity. Charlie was. to that they are, some indications that part gained the power to unleash his be allowed to bait, the foreman in Abyssinia and Spain and profiting from experi- of the Italian air force is hatred against his fellow men on and bespatter his boss, but never

a cantinental scale. Millions of to pull the throne away from be ence in these two theatres. being re-equipped to en- ruined lives and billions of tears neath the worst and most, mam

meth Imposture among men, Yet Britain's mastery of able it to face better the are his harvest.

The other watched all those Those were anxious days, but we the air in the Mediterran- superior British machine events and must have seen them can afford to forget them. It hus

come at last. ean and Middle East has But is that all? We are so as a challenge to himself. He was been practically undisput- armoured now against all the supreme individualist and Hit- ler had sworn eternal wary against kinds of wishful thinking those

demanded who

the think and feek

He was

-ed..

How can we explain the mystery? Part

"the magnet across this

that we rightly search for right to

for themselves.

Charlie Chaplin is no politicjan. Ir less comfortable the master of pathos and Hitler He is a custard pic expert and not

ion.

"was hacking all pity to shreds even a philosopher. Yet just bo.

after all, they said, the Jews only

got their deserts.

Charlie Chaplin, should, shame them. He has given to the little Jew the, place, of honour in his greatest masterpiece.

He has asserted the rights, of the individual against the mon- strous gospel which Hitler ́on- throned, but to which sonic even in this land have been ready, to bend the knee. Charlie will laugh the nonsense aut, of them. And

perhaps, we shall, not live in a civilised world, until this flin con bo, shown in every, capital city hefore, multitudes, who sit with good consciences and laugh, thei- selves, Bick

From

the "London" Evening Standard," December. 10, 1940.”