1956-12-27 — Page 4

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✨ THE CHINA - MAIL, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1956,

GOODNIGHT, VIENNA!

OODNIGHT,

CITY OF A MILLION MEMORIES—BUT

NONE SO SCORCHING AS THEY ARE NOW

Vienna

Vienna,

you city of a million

memories. I can hear

By GEORGE GALE

the song and other songs. full of people,

queueing for journalists shed their I can hear of the "Tales eir soup, their face-flannels load of cynicism. from the Vienna Woods," and FaZOTE, their cards of sweet tales; I can hear of identity.

A

Wo have cared

a little: quarter of a million pounds for the Lord Mayor's fund, and. asylum for 3,000,

In Vienna overyone who has. weary thought has thought that any risk was worth while. That wo should risk the H-bomb's indiscriminate death. That we should say to Russia simply: "Stop. You may not do this."

embassy. Wo weren't starving. We were safe."

So one of them burst out, after he arrived from Budapest: the "Blue Danube." sweet Hundreds after hundreds of "It WAJ nothing. Wo were tunes, but murky river here people, all of them Hungarian, comfortable. We were in the and dread beyond.

all of them refugees,

This grey "Trium-

Austrian barracks I can hear the

And another said: "I cannot phal March" from "Aku" was for brighter to them than

Sacher's was to us. i did not write it. My conscience is too and A hundred zithers like the barracks, I wanted to big. Wo worried about the twanging out

our food, and all the thousand be back at a bar stool, arguing food, 21 times the theme of Hurry about the price of tonic water. time this"-with a weary hand-

"was going on." Lime.

of

can hear the wild volins

players Hungarian

cafes weeping

Viennese the death of love.

in

I have heard from alat, frivolous cates, The organ's thunder over Hungary and have seemed to hear Boaring over, like a boy's treble, those stilt-

It costs more than the gin, you see, and that seemed to us

to be wrong. We thought the price of tonie water was wrong after we hnd come from: Traiskirchen and written of Hungary.

singing spirits of the martyred THAT

lund.

Glory....

MAT 1 not all I remember

of this Sycher's bar.

Holl

23 dozen students were there

There in no shortage of once, mouthing loudly that they memories, nor uny Jack of were there to help. We did not pain. The lights are bright, the like

the manners, da 11, but the hurl,

Conscience

T

anger, and the persist and do more than tug

So I remember Sucher's bar: damask elegant hotel of rid and glided mirrors, of varnished paintings shining on the walls, lek drapings, and a hundred thousand crystal drops.

Funny?

with Hany, the barman, over the pitce of

ROWED

an Indian

tende water

London gin,

n joke.

A

their fuces or their

"Oh, I ahall remember Vienna: gay and sad, rejoicing and grievous, banal, itke "Harry Lime's theme,

I have learned things.

i know now, from watching in this city, that boys can kill tanks. I have always known that tanks can kiti boys.

I'm Glad

HAVE known the degrada- flon of men better than their elevation. All of us know this fruly know

though

We thought they had come in our time; we for the glory, and when they more of Belsen

me back from Budapest haif Beethoven, of them tried to sell Atories to Ꮣ . But foolish. they stared little. outful, and more than they knew.

than of

we

may and

boys who

one their choose to forget the hear the other.

I know too that have never dreamed of freedom

it can want

and can prefer death 10 tyranny. 1 never expected to ir table. He knew who we

in my life the urge for He 201 his were.

Angers liberty that used to make the his hair

and lisped; people

act. and make through

true "Jave you heard about my heroes out of bank clerks. new play?"

I remember a night at a sill restaurant. We But pad laughed. Emlyn Williams joined willingly

advantage of Sacher's bar is that you have lie to sober up between the

We trunda " fhought it funny at the tune, wo English and Americans, gathered for fair speriilis,

The service was slow I made He deliberately satirised him- I sakl; "The great self. He was not in Austria for

the

He publicity.

Whs In Austria to སྐངrek; }ius KUN who

มง

It student Rone Budapest,

And Best of ay had just

driven back from Talskirchen, hurrying to our civilisation,

Tuiskirchen 13 24 #rey There is no proper

barracks

heating there, I smells too

much of people, 11 was it 15-

I had sarn the ucior

Trulskirchen, cigarettes away fairly

That people In Vienna,

W03

how It bright and

People lost Actors spurned

TIME

I

the

I thought that people always could be brainwashed and that only robots would be left, thought that nowadays selence of inumidation had to conquered instinct, that spirit had been defeated in the past few decades by the power of the man-made State,

earlier

giving humbly,

So I am glad that Hungary affected has taught me better. But it elegant has taught me iso that we are not as the Hungarians. For we might have helped but dki not. : Their veneer. We might have risked, but publicity, and dared not,

WAITS FOR NO MAN

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The manufacturers of Tissot regret the temporary shortage and promise that their ladies and gent's quality timekeepers will shortly be available in the latest models, and all in the famed tredition of Société Suisse Pour l'industrie Horlogère S.A. Geneva, Switzerland.

SINCE 1983

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TREASURED WATCHES FOR 100 YEARS.

Société Suisse Pour l'Industtle Horlogère S.A. Geneva, Switzerland

Sale Asmint. GNTIS, LTD.

OMEGA - 7/3301

$10. Gløysseler, Bužli

I know in London and in Manchester, in Somerset and in

the Cambridgeshire,

cholco would have been blurred. The Wo alternative, to neglect, the con- science money, would have been the loss of our land-for we elties carmot hope to see our stand if we ourselves do not stand up.

Vienna's

bright

But In restaurants

lost our we have temper and

We our words. huyo dared to risk all this-in argument at least. We have said; it civilisation la to be saved, it must be risked,

Goodnight, Vienna. Good- night, such thoughts. Let's dream awhile.

On with the dance!

BUSES

"Bough! her a coffee in Port Said and she's followed me around over since."

Tige

A star writer tackles a new kind of serial-a story of real-life men and women who, in two decades, have become almost a race apart

THE SKY PEOPLE

T

death.

by Tom Pocock

WENTIES fists gripped beer tankards. Two hands held brandy glasses. The men with the brandy were talking rather too loudly and laughing rather too much. Just 10 minutes earlier they had both been as near men can go to Budden

The two men had been in a Meteor jet fighter. The Meteor had dived and, as it dived, its controls hnd locked.

At that speed and at that angle of descent death in an English fleld was just 20 seconds away. A few seconds, a few hundred feet to spare, and the jammed controls answered. The Meteor staggered

back into the sky.

So now here they were, those two men, drinking brandy in the inc talking rather loo loudly, and laughing rather loo

nuch.

} Temember that alumn noon so clearly. I will never forget I was one of the two

mer.

That evening as I returned to London 1 needed no mesculin drung to help me revel in the state ot being alive. The colour, the sounds and the movement of life were new and exciting. People seemed kinder, more vital,

FEAR PASSES

There were the small-but now so wonderful physical comforts of a gas fire, a glass of wine, cool sheels. And, next morning, the joy of waking up.

Yes, they

are The Sky

People They fly higher

·

and faster

· •

They fly missions

of mercy and missions of destruction.

Their lives can be luxurious

and cruelly violent. What

SORT of people are they?........

ever sweat nerves

and

I flew,

were tuned to

Whether it is

DRAWING

BY ROBB

Yorkshire in a Jaguar, and that But even now these men, for evening in the mess when the me, belong to a race apart. They footprints got on to the ceiling. belong to the most exclusive of And the same friend who all clubs, to which the entrance changed when he exchanged his fee is akili and tho subscription

and blazer for flying courage. Love mixed with awe and exciting life of her husband and flannels

They Will she ever get helmet, oxygen mask and pera- That was three years ago, but excitement and apprehension, his friends?

seem simple men and, He then became the those minutes in the Meteor left But that is how love should be. used to the knowledge that her chule.

on the ground, they lead simple mon who their mark. For months, when-

husband's place of work is the through thunder clouds over the and the glory of flight. They could guide you lives. Yet theirs is the power my prims would Whenever I fly-and I fly as stratosphere?

Alps and set you down on a

are the plancers of the futura my hair-trigger a passenger, not a pliot-the

thrill is thore.

Will she ever overcome the strip of concrete hidden by and its heirs. each changing note and beat of the in a Stratocruiser or a Canberra, wonder that he is returning driving rain. engines, every jolt of the air. a flying-boat or a helicopter, home to dinner at the speed of

there to bo felt is the true sound? Then the fear passed and, to my surprise, left me with a tang of excitement. greater love. of flying.

And the pilot of that Meteory He now alco a Hunter jet Sighter. He has flown through He has the sound barrier. landed by ejector sent and parachute.

POCKET CARTOON

by OSBERT LANCASTER

MY TRIP

ONLY

POSTPONE

-EDEN

| Saritone stems to hawk Mery valiable crystal ball i

VIOLENCE

The man who talked about Mach numbers, oxygen-starva-

FIGHTERS

Will she, as he has, learn to tion, and the fact that, unpro- I wanted to write about these accept the risk of death with- tected, human blood boils at menahd these women, too, fect as casually us we because both; their wives and out warning as calmly as other 80,000

discuss a rush-hour the air hostesses, who also fly, wives accept the risk of illness landsmen in the family? Will she, in fact, journey to the office.

belong to the Sky People. So I herself become one of the Sky

talked to Ronald Walker, air reporter, People?

And he will he be able to live with both the crying of their

the roar of baby and

I

10 MILES UP

Go to a fighter stnilon,” he said. Fly with the crew of an Get to know tha have seen these men. In airliner, He has pitched a fighten on to flame in the jet-pipe, with the strange and awesome and some plots, the young ones who will the lurching deck of an aircraft smell of cooking and the small times dangerous places. In fly the airplanes now on the carrier at 100 miles an hour and of paraffin fuel? Will he survive the high drama of their airil drawing boards. taken the air' again with a as both a man and superman? into Berlin. In helicopters monstrous kick from the steam

janding on $2 pltching deck catapult. His work is full of I thought of the other flying swept by the freezing spray of speed and violence.

men I have known. Some, are an Arctle galo, still flying, others dead. Faces

In names crowd, in on the

transport 20 years old. He intends to memory. Willams and Balley, bouncing through tho hot, continue flying high-perform Reynolds and Young Baldwin turbulent air above the blazing ance airplanes

for another 10 and Martin, Edwards years, by which time he will,

This particular jot pilot is now and

and yellow of the

airplanes

in the compacted. Ifo-apsi Cooper, Ordinary: names--but airliner swoopingahora. In an

men?

NOW

the fighter pilot, be an old man, a, NAN He also intends, before Year, to

Kot married

among the Yukon mountains [when the fog liften "off, the Each

name brings back the graval airstrip for three minutes. memory of a split personality............ The friend with whom a In a Canberra one of dozené

I have taken his advico. And now I feel not just that I have to know some aircrews and their wives but that I have itad. a_brief・ and privileged glimpse a different world, a world of belonging to the future, the world of the Sky People:

TOMORROW:

In the steps of

How I wondered, will this shared a mildly hectic evening-streaming throuds the night The Few

pilot's bride take to the wrained, în solo, a tart ride, through sky 10 miles Above Ekope

4