Page
GEORGE GALE says
THE CHINA. MAIL," MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1955. T
TIME WE TOOK THIS CHAIN
FROM PRINCESS
H
MARGARET
the both roared against it.
20
Horace No one
now believes that should always English Royalty
Continental Royally. marry (George V was the first English Sovereign lo take the Throne with an English-born wife since Henry VIII.)
12 Walpole said: "Never was an
Aei passed against which
so little be much and for which can
was said."
SOME SORRY SEQUELS
by dissented from" OW would you like it or
If you couldn't get Sovereign, then he or she,
months after giving notice to married before you the Privy Counell. were 25 without your big married unless both Houses of
shall, before sister's
the Not Parliament permission?
12 expiration of the anld much, I hope,
inonths, expressly declare their disapprobation,"
get
the
You would like it still less
If any descendant does it the only way you could get married after you became 25, married without going through supposing your big sister still those fantastic formalities, officially disapproved, would be marriage is null and void,
Not only that, but everybody to tell the Houses of Parliament and then sit back and wall 12 who solemnised, assisted, or was present nt auch a "narriage" to see
If they objected, months
like it if ceremony incurs the penalties of How would you Parliament said then: "No, we Praemunire. This is contempt
and of the Sovereign, choice,' don't lite
your there was nothing for you to do but accept their word as Anal?
THE PENALTIES LAID DOWN
Son
was a sorry episode out of a Dorry time in our history. It has had some sorry - sequels.
George III's
George, Regent, married Mrs Prince Fitzllerbert. The marriage, ac cording to the Act, was null and Prinny was subsc- vold-so
able to marry Caroline quontly
who became his of Brunswick,
the Queen when he ascended Throne.
tou
But, of course, now
of Princes
́DID IT HAPPEN ↑ Another story to keep you guessing. The answer will be given tomerroW ·
The Man on the Boat
offered whisky
D
URING that North African spring be- foro Rommel launch-
ed the big drive that was to sweep him on past the Act Tobruk to the gates of in being used for a different
Alexandria, the Allied line purpose. It is being used to up-
was composed of a series hold the propriety and Princesses. This. in its of defensive "boxes" running way, is an even more imper- from Gazala, on the sea, to tinent purpose than the original
south. The conformation purpose of George III and the Bir Hacheim, 45 miles to the crabbed Sophle-Charlotte,
a of the coastline the green, For who docides what is proper marriage? Not the Queen mountain-backed strip be eting privately. Probably not tween Derna and Benghazi, the Government. It would be the Archbishop If Dr Geoffrey Fisher why.
of Canterbury,then the sudden curve due had his south to Aghella-made the small town of Agedabia, 400 miles 'to the west of our line, a pivotal point in the Axis rear areas.
It has had its silly sequels No, you would not like it. If
When the King of Spain asking would be bad enough
SORRY MARITAL your sister's permission to begin. THE penalties, as laid down in married Pricess Ena of Batten- in 1905 there was a bout 1302-pes, 1392-are the loss burg with. It would be much worse
RECORD England speculation in when you knew that it was not of all civil rights and imprison of her private permission you were ment during the royal pleasure. whether the Act applied to this
In 1013 the King ET'S forget that the various her official asking but
per- Why on earth did George III marriage.
consented to the ruling houses in English his- want to tie mission, which meant you were
his grandfather's formally
a pretty sorry asking the Prime Minister and descendants to the Sovereign's marriage of Prince Ernest of tory have had
Cumberland to
Kaiser's marital record. the the Archbishop of Canterbury. apron strings for perpetuity?
daughter. In 1937 蠱 Special Let's skip the awkward fact I would be worse mill if she He was a dull King and
(At the Ume the Privy Council was summoned that the Church of England- relused permission, for then you had one.
now so strenuova in its op- Govern- Act
he was was passed would know that the
Just on a Sunday at Sandringham to
to the position to
divorce would not About give the King's consent ment the Church refused about to lose America.)
or
of for marriage
Prince Paul of liave come into existence it a permission and that you were the only thing to be sald
Greece with Princess Frederika King of England had not wanted a divorce, and could only get one by having his own Church in his pocket and breaking with
wasting, your time appealing to him was that he was faithful to
Parliament.
HALF-BAKED STATUTE
his spouse.
Now George III hud three brothers.
of Brunswick.
When Lord Harewood married Maria Stein, the King's con-
sent had to be given.
a good There are probably No one
dozen German ex-princelings
muter med he died who, If their marringes are to
The eldest might have mar rled Lady Mary Coke. knows if he did, but it does not before the Act was passed. The youngest, the Duke to Cumberland, after seducing the and wife of Lord Grosvenor, married
the widow of Mr Horton, Catton, in Derbyshire.
ut
Rome.
of the Common
nirendy closely related. wants
NOW Princess Margaret is 25. the thirtest iden / whother she wants to get married or not, 1 know the rumours that she marry Peter Townsend, know the rumours that the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks she should not.
1
sumewhat
concerned
I AM that her right to marry as she chouses is proscribed by a half- baked statule bulldozed through Parliament by a King who was determined to increase his power in every possible direction and who was egged on by his foolish wife.
of
Then the middle brother, the Duke of Gloucester, married the widow of Lord Waldegrave, her- self illegitimate.
J
COMMONERS WERE OUT THE King was horrified. More
was to the point, so
George III was the King. The wife, She, Sophie-Charlotte statute was the Royal Marriage Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
Act
WDS
his
of
the
The year was 1772. The daughter of an obscure German Act was bad then. It has not princeling whose only dignity was her technically royal blood.
improved with age.
the
It is called "An Act for
the
That approval is no mere nod
to the head. It has of "signifled under the Great Seal, and declared in Council."
If the decendant, "being above the age of 25
years, shall persist in his or her resolution
-und
should
B W03
but
01
be legal in England, would have permission, to ask the Queen's No one knows quite how many descendants there are of George 11. He was prolific. So was George III. So was Victoria.
The situation created by the Act is farcical. It has served its purpose, if ever it had one.
Let's just look at this Act. It is a violation Law right of English people to marry whom they will provided they are of age and are not
It allows politicians and pre- lates to meddle where they have no right to meddle. It breeds factions and gossip.
There is only one thing to do with this Act-get rid of 11.
I was at that time a junior staff officer at the headquarters of 13 Corps, with little to do but stick pins into maps. All the pins seemed to be concentrated in the coustal strip; south- wards was open desert pin- less
£9 far as Agedabla. Why not, I thought, go for a drive in that direction and ace what was going on. We might even get a clue to the whereabouts of the German Panzer division, which air reconnaissance had been unable to locate.
I submitted a plan based on the use of a Jeep, newly issued do the Camp Sergeant Major, the tncifcal use of which had
Hearing a great commotion I turned to find the other two struggling on the sand. The wiry little Italian sailor had got hold of my friend's pistoi.
wps unnecessarily drastic. Pressing my pistol to the small of the sailor's back, I fired. Ho rolled over, releasing my friend from his grip,
thero and lay gasping and groaning. We did our best to comfort him,
Meanwhile
bearded the officer,
somewhat overcome, stood silently aside. I told him that
we were British officera and that I regretted having to shoot. He said he quite under- stood that it was necessary. In
what answer to my question saliors were doing out in the desert he said that he was Capitano di Frigato (Frigate Captain) attached to the Mil- mart (Marine Artillery) and had been superintending the Installation of naval guns in the Agedabin linc.
Goodbye
д
we should I told him that have to take his car as the Jeep had broken down. He said that it contained enough petroi to get us to Cairo. It also cou tained, we found. food and Wine and the plans of the Agedabla line.
not, at that stage of the war, reluctantly surrendered by the been very
It would perhaps have been widely considered. Sergeant Major.
We drove for two days with- militarily correct to have taken The sporting Brigadier-General Staff (who now holds a most out incident, affecting this story. the oficer with us as a prisoner of the third but In view of the distress of elevated milliary appointment) On the morning
who approved the idea and I was day we were awakened by the the wounded mor his mother. allowed to set off with an In-
powerful motors, pitifully calling telligence officer and the Jeep, Peering
the edge of a
to leave him 69 a we decided grent depression we saw large nurse. We presented him with numbers of men busy con- a bottle of whisky for first ald, structing what looked like a said goodbye, and drove home, strong defensive position; the uneventfully save for the fact motors were compressors driv- that we blew up
Is Our Language Out Of Date
For This Changing World?
M
once
and nt
Charles
that
Right-minded men to the Act. objected to contract marriage disciplined James Fox and Edmund Burka
DON'T MISS
the display of latest style
JAEGER-LECOULTRE
GENEVA
to
no
By LES
A bit bewildering?
Tackling It
Well, the experts
too. And they think there is probably a connection between ail these problems. To try to sort it out, University College, London has set up a department of "Communication".
Manchester
At
University, the School of Social Science under Prof. Michael Polanyi has been digging into it.
ARMOUR
enables
Simply because It you to keep a great many things "ju mind" even though they are not actually present. It enables you. by substituting symbols for things, to grasp the nature of thousands of things and the
relations between thousands of things at once.
"useful limits" of vocabulary.
A Theory
of
DVCT
on our own
ing pneumatic drills. Thin, we minefeld (laid since we set surmised, was
part of a line.
being built by by MICHAEL ALEXANDER the Ralians to cover Ageda.. bia and the
duller school child, shares the supply line to the front, hitherto
un known to our
uneasiness.
Not that he feels it directly
or has the faintest idea that Intelligence.
his language no longer ude. quate. But his imagination is The Jeep captured by the, march of crept past un- science and what he is learning SCCA behind
seem to help the at school doesn't
Band him to satisfy his curiosity.
and dunes And that problem is further
was soon in- complicated by another dim-
stalled on culty. More people are going to
↑ buil
school than ever went to school/6/11 -
at any other period of human history. The art of reading and writing is possibly the most difficult in the world to learn.
ic
and
ing Agedabia nirfield the main coast
MICHAEL ALEXANDER was o
captain in the Commandos. In co-operation with Gilas Romifly he
wrote The Privileged Nightmare. about their adventures as prisoners of war, More recently be won responsible for rescuing a friend from the Foreign Legion, and he is now writing up this adventure, too. He is 32, unmarried, and flees in Kensington.
road eat there counting No Assurance
common.
the
I was
Bish
AN'S biggest problem She thought royalty Belter Regulating
This
the be not may Future Marriages of the Royal marry royalty.
H-bomb -it may national
brotherhood" and It says that no de- purely Continental notion, Family."
sulted the King. who
against except it well
"fascism", "dietator acendants of George II,
was determined to increase his be his language, the children of Princesses who
We all take language for ship", "war", "war-mongering", marry into foreign familles, can royal power as much as possible.
So the King forced through granted. More and more people and "sin".
Of course, you alto know be married without the approval of the Sovereign before they are Parliament his Royal Marriage are learning to read and write
that what the Russians mean by to put and the time may not be too Act, which was meani 25.
what we an end to the practice Hano-distant when leracy is a thing these things is not
that mean by these things and verian younger sons were deve-of the past. be
We all think we
can under- loping
of marrying commoners
we are right. But are you sure
But it only works so long as stand English coinmoners
another perfectly you know what you mean? And one well.
Communication doesn't how do you think the politicians it is relatively simple.
a few words stand the diplomats get along Because seem to be a problem-let alone
language threat.
when they alt down with tho for. many things, But wait. Look at Bome Russlans around a table to dis- simplifies the world and brings
It down to manageable propor random facts;
cuss these things? According
the British
tlons.
the out), seriously injuring my If there are too many words, Ministry of Education, one-third
all of them become meaning- We assure of the fifteen-year-old boys and
that there is big transport planes coming in friend but fortunately doing no less.
really enough teaching talent in regularly 10 land and heavy damage to me, girls at school in 1948 were un-
think SO, Prof. Polarry! estimates that the world to fill the gap. But diesel lorries roaring up
The sequel to this story took able to understand simple
only between 2,000 and 3,000 there is no assurance. The vital read by day and night. On the pizce in the happier anmer of Ish sentences when they were
English words are in common touch that enables a teacher to evening of the second day's log- 1948. put before them in print.
use. In a big library, there may put across, difficult abstractions ging we decided that there was friends near Naples, spending Never mind, you say? Those
be 30,000 words in use. These to small children is not so nothing more to be learned, it most of my time underwater the boys are boys and girls who
figures mark something like the
more profitable
with a might be
to trying to shoot won't do much reading in after
Perhaps
human talent just drive on towards Bens
spring-lended harpoon gun. life, anyway? Besides, 1701
isn't extensive enough.
I Climbing The Jeep would not
out on to seaweedy trouble personally, have
And no one, so far, has in-diagnosed spark trouble and in rock I slipped and fell, driving understanding anything put be-
into vented a robot which will do my urgent efforts to clean the the barbed steel trident fore you in print. ...
the trick. (Though the men who points snapped off a small but the calf of my leg. Thus trans-
mechanical brains are
lessly Immobilising ́us. Night the water and cry for help. A working on even that problem.) vital piece of metal, thus hope fixed I could only silp back into But to got to the final prob- found us stuck 400 miles from rowing boat containing sömu lem, the problem of the langu→ home.
local youths approached and I worl
age of politics. all boggling.
The only hope was to find signalled them pull me There was a time when people Now, it a few words serve to
transport, 30
wo abourd. enable you to grasp many
everywhere thought that there alternative
the things, it in obvious that langu were certain fixed values. Some wandered off towards
were town, through the minofeld on things were right, some age is, as Prof. Polanyi says, o
wrong. Our political language is to the airfield, under the pro- theory about the world.
The language will.work as based on that supposition. vocative wings of giant Savolas long as the theory it puts forth
Rather than endure a landing O! course, there W48 no and Junkers, and into the main is the right theory.
world-wide agreement on what square. In the town circum on the rocky coast, I made them The sentence I have quoted to
that theft takse me lo a small yacht that lay our was right and what was wrong. stances happens that is not out of an esoteric learned stage where the child learns to theories about the world have But within each cultural group was impracticable.
a few hundred yards away. We Journal. It comes from Penguin talk, the chimpanzee's mental been changing pretty mpidly, virtually within each langunge We matched some sleep in a went alongside and it was then Science News and the scientists development parallels the child's Nuclear physics,
Was such astro-physics, group there
cemetery and a wet dawn found that for no particular reason I who wrote I, P. Howard- closely. After that, the chim-
us making back for the Jeep suddenly thought about the Flanders and A. W. Haslett, panzee
falls rapidly behind psycho-somatic medicine and a agreement.
There was little attempt
where we had left our supplies. the frigate captain, were making con- that only because the child's dozen other sciences have made
reconcile the differences on
an Down thought they
a sandy track, coming been dor this
premonitory thought science intelligible mind can grow, because it can major changes vitally necessary. temporary
This has put several kinds of international level.
straight towards us, was the thoug
doubt if Nowadays use symbols. to the layman.
strain on the language.
mass communica- answer to our problem, a small have recognised the h Now, looks at another prob-
Man is endowed with less First, it involves more words, tion has rammed everyone's in
Flat station wagon. In the front shirtless man who appeared on lem, You read the newspapers, physical advantages than almost not Just a few but hundreds, theories down everyone cisc's
sat an Italian officer, He had the deck and helped me aboard. cold You know all about the
throst and statesmen work un any other creature on earth. perhaps thousands,
a polated beard and seemed to When he spoke I was sure war. You know that both Without language man ia Second, and more important, the curious assumption there is. sides are in favour of "demo- lost.
It means that the theory the somewhere, an ultimate standard be in naval uniform; his driver was he. He made me comfort- looked. Ulke an ordinary sedman, able, then went below, return- "justice"
"peace", Why is language a tremen- language cracy'
Lip to serve which everyone accepts and
with a bottle of whisky
It "national Integrity", inter- dous advantage?
is до Longer rogarded as a common meaning to all
must have been the whisks that the right one. Terms like "mat- words.
minde him think about that morning in the desert, for he suddenly said: "Did you fight in Africa?"
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Do you know what a
is? Are you sure you know what an electron is? What do you make out of 'MeV electrons'?
Lean than 2,000 words would not enable you to talk sense Top British philosophers about the things which come make A. J. Ayer at London. Gilbert within the ordinary man's pure More than 30,000 words Ryle at Oxford, John Wisdom at view.
would leave even scholars Cambridge and a host of others have been devoting nearly their time to various aspects of the languge problem.
Here are some of the con- clusions;
First of all, as Prof. Polanyi points out, man's sole advantage over the animol is his ability use language. Up to the
men of few words say .
Pink Plymouth
please
and earn the respect of all who appreciate that REAL pink gin should be prepared: with PLYMOUTH GIN...
But, do be sure it is
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Sole Agentay CALDEECE MACGREGOR
Now,
grow
210
to grasp the now theory. Meaningless
an
the
were such
I thumbed them to a halt.
Broken down
to
Small yacht
I
Had it
It not
I
It.
"mind" "substance". That might be all right energy and the like a longer people oven agreed that there stand for anything very certain. was an ultimate value standard And the man whose grasp ls to which everyone murt be I said that we were German limited to ordinary language is persuaded to agrees,
airmen, and that while shoot. From then on he did every- unable
our thing to make my condition ing gazelle in the desert car and broken down. As our caster: ho took his boat into We are, after all, of learning new
But the decline of religion, airplane was due to leave that harbour, got hold of a car, and grasping "definitions" in terms for one thing, and developments morning perhaps he would be drovo me into hospital, where of other words. But if no ald in philosophy in the last kind enough to give us a tow. the spear was removed without words will do, we are lost un- years, for another, have gradu. Though he
ho gave our British much damage. loss we can see the "thing" the ally eroded this bellef until battle-dress word stands for in front of us ecarcely exists. Few philosophers the originality
in the habit words by
look suspicious ⇓
of our
Feel Uneasy nowadays believe that, there is
an ultimate standard of values, coupled with the fact that he died a few minutes after we
But you can't see an electron, The result
I learned that on that other alory, morning the Italian driver had
must left, was out of his element, the that value have convinced the officer that
a neutron, or a meson particle, words which the politicians une
WA
DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
YES
NO
for "he And they can only be defined have become almost literally all was above board,
and there is little told us to jump in and In terms of mathematical equa meaningless tions which, themselves, are a doubt that a largo proportion bumped off over the desert to wholly now that we toni at international, disputes arise where our Jeep lay, hidden be-
No wonder,
over simple misunderstandings: hind the dunes. uneary when the scientists and each statesman thinks he knows We all got out and stood the technicians start to folk, No exnotly
what his opponent wonder scientists find it hard to encans; but in practice, he is awkwardly around. I drew my pistol and pointed it.at tho make themselves understood at likely to be horribly wrong.
who simultaneously Hearing a great com-
two
a moment in history when It It is sometimes, very hard to officer
more vital than ever before fell apart, a speech by Mr Falsed his eyebrows and his
a speech by Mr hands. that they should make them Moloury and selves understood. 1:
Dullos.
Bumming With the language expanding.
up language moliori: I turned to
other
And the on the wiry little Italian able to give us a good picture all directions Unlead someone sallar had got hold of my In the of what the world is really like can get to the bottom of the friend's pistol and was
at a phenomenal rate and une now under warious stress
or rath thought to be like problem we may all be in for process of beating him over, the Saarvan possible
the rough time, « very rough time head with the butt, Blood, was shool- child, de partiollerty" fiam indek
Lowing. Perhaps DIY EKAN BAH
Put your
tick. In the above and keep the panelby, you unul tomorrow, when 'the answer will ha: given i another story' in "thu
Julian Symons
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