1941-09-04 — Page 39

THE CHINA MAIL, SEPTEMBER 4, 1941.

CHINA MAIL

WINDSOR HOUSES

COMPLACENCY AND

THE FACTS

The tone of both British and

Américan.official

comment as we enter upon the third year of the war is worthy of careful note. In his Labour Day speech, President Roose- velt did more than issue a stirring call to the peo- ple of the United States to put their shoulder to the wheel and to exert the united strength of the nation. He was also very urgent in stressing the utter folly of supposing that the violence of the campaign on the eastern! front has lifted the! menace from the west. Mr. Brendan Bracken, the new Minister of Informa- tion, was equally empha- tic in his talk with journalists. Hitler, he said, was Britain's Enemy No. 1, Enemy No. 2, also as yet undefeated, was Complacency.

The fact is that in both with.

the British Empire and learned. the United States there is

a very large section of th

public which does not realise how heavy

1939

It is time they

TREASURE LOST

and The Hunterian Collec-

1940

1941

THE UPPER GRADIENT

"Germans" In Captivity

time for a FOR the first

long for Czechs guarded by Germans; while an authentic and im- but in truth the Germans are liv-

outer world of conditions in

It gives an extraordinary pic- lure-for it shows that the con-

of becoming, spiritually, the con- quered and captives.

camp there, fidgetting and fret- ting under the boycott of the Czechs.

bitter is likely to be the tion, most of which has fight that still lies ahead been lost by enemy action A great part of Britain is--another "honour" for still too unaware of the the Luftwaffe,-is said to partial account has reached the ing in a spiritual concentration perils of the Battle of the have cost John Hunter Prague, the Czech capital. Atlantic and the narrow five times the sum of margin by which we re- £15,000 for which the tain the upper hand. In Government bought it for querors and captors are in course part arising from censor-the nation in 1799. So ship designed to keep in- is not surprising to learn formation from the that while Hunter's in- of the Kings of Bohemip on the enemy and in part from a come rose at one period to hill which

symbol of Czech patriotism, is in censorship which tends to £6,000, he was kept poor mournful plight; from its gigantic keep unpleasant facts in by his lavish buying. In-flagstaffs and windows, on great the background, this cuts deed, he had no fondness

both ways.

for actual practice, pre-

For an ineradicable tralt of the German is his longing to be loved, after he has conquered, by his The Hradschin, the great palace | victims; he yearns to be popular

is the emblem and enslaved and cannot understand it when this affection is withheld from him.

By

the study, and Douglas Reed

The "New Republic" (of ferring the dissecting- New York) said the other

(room and the study, and week:

would attend to the ordin-

Too long have the Americans been

hiding complacently behind the ad-ary details of his con-

mittedly tough fibre of the British

people. They are wonderful."' we sultations and so forth occasions, flies the Swastika, and within it sits the aged and alling is true that they are wonderful; but only because it afforded puppet-president, Hacha.

say, "They will never give up." IL

it is not true that they can hold out him means of purchasing! The real headquarters of Prague for ever if their position greatly curiosities. "Well, I must to-day is the Deutsches Haus, the We also have been rather go and earn that damned great town.

worsens.

Bierhalle down in the

with the inferior people he has

But the Czechs, as all will know who read the story of the the good soldier Schwejk and disservices he rendered to his Germanic masters (then in Aus-. trian guise) in the last war, is a. pastmaster in the art of passive resistance, and he is endlessly fertile in inventing new ways to confound and confuse his gaolers,

I remember, when the Germans Invaded Prague, seeing a carload of overbearing SS officers drive up to a Czech policeman and ask him the way to the Wenceslas Place: without blinking an eya, lid he politely waved them in the wrong direction.

guilty of the same kind guinea or I shall be sure The Deutsches Haus, and all of complacency, and some to want it to-morrow." the more expensive hotels, res-

and

The cafes in Prague

Germans later thwarted It did not do to be taurants speakers both in England

on the driver's and in the United States squeamish about methods swarm with Germans, scores of that trick by forcing Czechs to

thousands of whom have been sit beside them have encouraged it. There of getting what he want- brought to Prague to displace seat but the Czech knows a ways that cannot be