THE CHINA MAIL, APRIL 30, 1941
CHINA MAIL
WINDSOR HOUSE
LINDBERGH TACTICS
Colonel Lindbergh's letter to President Roosevelt resigning his commission was couched in termis likely to have most emotional ap- peal to American public opinion. "Copperhead" seenis to have touched him on the raw, but the tactical astuteness revealed in the manner of his riposte makes it very clear that Colonel Lindbergh)ị is very conscious of the point be- hind the President's strictures and that his attitude is unshaken. Col. onel Lindbergh has done as much as any individual along the line that delights Axis propagandists and to contribute to the ominou pattern in the reiterated failure of large sections of the American. people to catch up with the swift move of events. In August, 1939. they listened gladly to those who sand Germany will never dare start a new war. During the winter months of inaction they wrote th contest off as a "phony" war and thus saved themselves th embarrassnient of facing facts. When 1 Arst rumours came that Holland and Belgnif might be invaded they solned themselves with the words "Ger many would never do that." Denmark and Norway fell. and the war was brought to their very shores by the issue of Greenland, they chorused louder than ever "This is not our war.” When Hol land and Belgium were crushed and France fell they hearkened gladly to those who said that if runde no difference which side won. And now, as Germany ha battered down the last resisters on the European Continent and is within reach of Suez -- and Moroe- ru, these same people say th Africa is a long way off, and that what has happened in the Balkan does not concern America.
ugly
A.
All this while, with the ruth- Fessness of the mexorabie, Win has been matching ejuser to
the Western World day by day. W. are not referring tu those implicit in the policy of aid to
are we speaking
The basic facls-have not chang ed. For months --- in fact
was the German ambition. It
BRAGGA-
DOCHIO
SILENCED !
THIS ABSURD
IMPOSTER
SHALL BE ABANDONED
TO PUBLIC JUSTICE AND UNIVERSAL
SCORN
"History Grips Us By The Throat” Mussolini.
Happiness In Hard Times
der
-By Ivor Brown
epitaph which gives such a sar- donic twist to the familiar senti- ments about "the flowers of the forest."
Here dead lie we because we didj
not choose
To live and shame the land from
which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much
to lose;
But young men think it is, and
we were young.
Of course, in lives that seem of most cleary made for contentmen:
there are the inner stresses an deny felicity frustrations which
the
Brita
A visit to a University in these such acts of President Roosevelt¦ days is seuvely a happy matter. und Mr Hull as there offer of help; True, the Colleges are not yet to Yugoslavia und Greece
bare, run'd choirs: nor are they
the bureau į their denunciation of Germany": ¦ desolate, Sometimes invasion as "barbaric " Rather; erat has filled up the empty rooms. are we referring to the work-con-ul youth, but there are still many vuising changes which are umph- undergraduates, not yet called up, ent in Germany's virtual amega-mugling the gown of the scholar
with the uniform of the
licate shoot that cudet.
some suppose, tion of all of Europe west of Rus But what a travesty of that great, but often as tough as any weed 510, and in the undeniable evidt-
expanding Bite that spreads intractably in the Ray, confident, ences that Hitler's aim is nothing for so the undergraduate's should seemingly impossible nuok and short of world domination.
be- is this hurried and truncated | quiverest cuign of disadvantage. and over-shadowed course!
The relations of material good! Yet why should be of all men have does one And to mental confidence Yet how rarely
are always; so disprized existence? years-it has been clear to stud- self-pity in those whose entry to odd. Pessimism and poverty rare-
college or craft has been thus ly go together. There are, ents of German policy that in shortened or spoiled or prevented! | course, forever vocal the angers was equally clear that this could The Briton does not often wear and despairs of Grub Street: the
his heart on his sleeve or permit greyness of a Gissing or the self- It is obvious that happiness, like be achieved only by the defeat
the crack of it to be heard in slaughter of an artist too sensitive the Kingdom of Heaven, is with, and break-up of the British Em- public; doubtless there is much to lack of recognition will occur in us. Yet that is a most danger pire. This in turn presented to privy and natural anger against from time to time. But the major ous doctrine to pronounce. Fo America a choice between a world the cruel and frenzied world of pessimists, the railers and lumen- does it not
encourage all in which the dominant power out-raids and ruins into which the farters on the magnificent scale, the bullies and exploiters and tormen. side the United States would, in too clever scientist and the for one case, be an aggressive, highly less than clever statesmen have mighty organ-voices of the grantors of mankind to give their vic- gloom, have rarely dipped tuns but the scantiest meed of ma. milituristic German Empire, bus contrived to land us all. But not their pens in gall for lack of food terial comfort, on the ground tha ing its world policies on the use much, is said. Youth now has one and drink. Swift had his sorrows, they can find their bliss in their of force, and, in the other case, a consolation not shared by its fore- but he was not hungry, nor was hearts without benefit of jam or runner of 1914-18: it can feel that he conscripted for wars which he their bread? Once tell the world Jiberal-minded Brilish Empire, it is sharing the danger and the neither made nor wanted. Shake- that joy is an accident or at leas more concerned with preserving damage and not carrying the
to judge by his speare's mood,
an inward function of the soul the political status quo than with whole of it while age and com- work, grew steadily darker as he and what becomes of fair wages enlarging its powers, und stub-merce Aourish in comparative
for fair work and all the reason-d bornly believing in allowing other security. This must surely make more popular and prosper-
ous. He was a far richer, more able consolations of the senses and nations to run their own affairs in an enormous difference; another | recognised, and better furnished the appetites? What of liberty, it their own way.
war for the benefit of safe and
man when he wrote "Timon" and indeed the aspiring mind-outleap: Happily, most
he wrote "A the confining. Letters and the wall officers in the pursy profiteers would have been "Lear" than when
insufferable. On the other hand, Midsummer Night's Dream." And of stone? Administration in Washington have been sufficiently aware
youth can reasonably protest that
all our litera- surely nothing in
The truth is that the statesmar its elders had a plainer warning ture rivals "Timon" (or at least the dangers to American interests than was given a quarter of a
cannot create happiness, but tha its patently Shakespearean por- he can create or withhold the like- ,involved in a smashing German century ago and that they dis- tions) for its fury of world-hatred. ly means of achieving it.
victory iq take important steps to mally failed to take it.
Few have cultivated self-pity | Utilitarians jumped a stage in the prepare against it. But even
It would not be in nature for
when they talked a most of these seem to be. as, re- the young person of 1941 to be as, with more sedulous application to argument luctant as the American people as happy as was he of ten years gloom (as well as with more lyri-achieving the greatest happines: cal genius) than A. E. Housman, of the greatest number. By doin a whole to face the question whe- ago. Yet he gallantly assumes a
talks of a decent and few have
shaken a sadder this they likened happiness to ther the defeat of Germany can be morrow and
vain 'strivings of lump of cake which can be equit achieved by measures "short of shape for things to come. He has head over the war." The question is not whe- not ceased to think of politics be- mortality to make something of ably cut up and passed round. Bu ther the American people want to cause he has to be a soldier. In its brief sojourn upon earth. Yet happiness, being a by-product a
deed, one can walk about the Housman had, for far the greater one's activities, is certainly not go to war. No rational person, quadrangles of Oxford without part of his working life, the com- crudely distributable sweet-meat British or American would want feeling any strong sense of bitter-fort and security of Professorial The Americans who based their to do this if it could be honourably, ness and despair. A kind of Chairs: he had little routine work Declaration of Independence or avoided. Rather is it if they can buoyancy seems to continue and to weary him and ample time, life, liberty, and the pursuit afford to stay out of the war so happiness buds on stony ground both in term and in vacation, to happiness were talking more ac- long as there is a prospect that Happiness, after all, is not the de- prosecute his passion for scholar-curately than did our down Utili ship. Neither oppressed with | tarians. The pursuit of happi Germany.may achieve a complete.
riches nor galled with penury, he ness, the fair chance to join th victory and so long as the customs by Lindbergh defeatism, they are bad no calamities of marriage or hunt, that is what a just society of war, make it easy for Germany in peril of following the same the money market. Can one im- assures to its members. It never to claim territory of its victims in wishful thinking that misled many agine. a happier life than that guarantees the capture. The Bu regions whence attacks may be Aiñericans step by stop in the of the natural scholar living amid Bird, as Maeterlinck called it, is launched against the Western earlier phases of the war,
on the wing and nobody,can, b The the graces and amenities of an as-
sured academic position, a man sure of putting salt on its tail Hemisphere. As yet many Ameri- time for acting with realism and honoured by his colleagues and But we can see that all have t
uf
1
Out
cans are reluctant to admit or putting an end to half mea with no obligation to do any, work fair portion of the salt-supply and
this laevena
sures is very, near. Soon it may but that most dear to him? Yet the opportunity to go a-birding,
it was Housman who wrote this salt in hand,
alone that it is a danger, Fastered be too late.
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