1957-03-16 — Page 6

| Page 6

M'

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 1957.

by TOM STACEY "In all the world the place I long to be

*IGHT you be thinking, this rude

ly, healthy (cold and damp) Saturday morning, about where you might go for your holiday? "n the last few years I have neaked through jungle in Africa, paddled up remote river in

it on

Rio hospitals take on extra atpft oveT carnival to сорс with the knifing and bottle

casca-- nearly. bust-over-boke always victims, they say, of male jealousy.

singers and steel band boys streets in baby bikinis or glase- swinging

dressed-up jewelled tights. orrica edging through the mob, WATCHER WATCHING · R

all through Whis spectacles from the window ot a yellow plaster house 115 Port of Spain is П slightly-built 45-year-ukt Ne

Ph.D. (Oxon), lately professor of 100 似 Howard University for Negroes, U.S., the new Chiet Minister of Trinidad, and up coming young politico of the new-born West Indies Federa- fion.

poinsettia ресу

Try to make your way down Rio's main street (enlled Avenida Presidente Vargas, atter

and you

Malaya, trudged through Dr Eric Williams science beloved late diciátor)

frozen forests in Canada's north, and rocked

wider- Dcross mapped desert on a comel.

But when I have brushed the white ands off my bretches, and shaken the sand out of my car. I know there is one wonderful spot-and only one-where 1 would like to be just now,

it

The one place I know where really is very hard to stop yourself being happy. mean: the

West

Indies

and down the

coast of Brazil

to Rio,

Cause

BC-

เปิด

Carnival Time Down South.

the

This 19 time when people from the emerald hills of Trini-

dad, Or Blo,

or Haill come down

Bugar plantations and

groves and suddenly

And

I

Red-leaved

Into his back room where the People's National Movement has its party headquarters.

He is not the old-fashioned holy-roller type ihle Williams. but sharp-tongued and humour- less, clutching a slim thesis ex- plaining that the anti-slavery movement in Britain in the last century was inspired not by Humanitarian motives, but economic.

Somehow you do not get the impression this policar quite the music-hearted ALLY- Islander like the rest of them. (I sometimes feel that business in the Legislative Asembly from the should be conducted in calypso

banana rhythm.) reapper

in the streets of the waterside

confetti.

JELLY......

A COUP?

towns like a heap of unimated JUST a bit further south they have been working up for carnival for u fortnight. Au night falls over Rio de Janeiro, and crowds of black, brown, white Brazilians swarm out of the hillside slums, out of the housea skyscraper apartment and off the beaches, and jiggle through the main streets.

$ dawn breaks over Port of Spain, Trinidad, an oid Negro in a pink hai-too tired to join in the throng-steps out to a rhythm of calypeo,

a sauce

coming

A

will not get far these days.

It wil contain round quarter of a million of heaving

Brazilian humanity. drunk with ether

special sprays manufactured for this very e lebration. Во

ooming. shouting. himmying. wiggling.

Nogrocs with whitened skin and masks like'

dogs pirouette solo before you,

White dress up like black women doing the hokey-cokey all over.

men

The genius of Carnival Time is improvisation. If you went out there doing Victor Sylvester's samba with a one-two-three- AND-four, people would think you were slightly crackers.

But if you bash away with solo variation ar Kaess-up- Senhora-Brown, you won't be noticed.

Strive to perfect that basic African_wiggle.

Last

You

of

Freddie

BISMARCK

HINDENBURG

LUDENDORFF

ROMMEL

ammings

HALL

OF FAME

PRIVATE SOLDIER BAQRA

CERMANY WILL "FIGHT TO THE LAST BRITISH SOLDIER!

MEN and POWER

CHAPTER

ONE

1917 - 1918

Premiership 18 months

before,

it became possible to assess the

his strength of

support in Parliament

much

"But its implications went deeper than this. For Lloyd George the debate marked the final cleavage between his Liberal followers and those of

At

General the followed som Election that months inter few of those who Prime had voted against the Minister

tha Mourico

un

question escaped exclusion from Parliament.

SO DAPPER IHAT of the President

Brazil himself, Juscelino Kubitschek, who was entrusted these deliriously unruly people? year with the ruling of

The furore raised by Sir Frederick Maurice will

the British Army And him in

was rocking Parliament as the The nights are warm at this

The Arst time I saw one of

staggered before the mighty German onslaught Asquith. time of the year in Trinidad.

stifling hot Congress building in thero

ululating full evening dress (even though undulating leave the night club on the armies, You

I thought it was just it is the middle seaside and walk up town to a another revolution.

in France. His imputations questioned more than of the Or a coup.

day); entertaining guests late-night cale to cat a fish There were drums going, people fun

at a formal Ministerial veracity. They also condemned the sandwich with

function. hot

the guards Outside, and shouting,

singing and Д cnough to stand your hair

their comic-opera

Government on their military direction of the war. official un waving things. Whities. Fire-

uniforms

and end.

papier-mache crackers like pistol shots.

If the case were proved the Government must You can

helmets stand about Idly. henr the calypso

But the dapper President will

inevitably fall. teams still practising.

be a little impatient to get down "And the

to Copacabana for his very own together,

celebration. Carnival is creep- "Is the merrter we will be," sings calypso chief

The Lord Melody, all in flowers, to a altitude of Trinidad revellers shaking it out like a tableful of jelly.

THE women dress to kill And JIFLES Carnival Time, Down South, "A the prettiest worden" in my From mid-morning to fork and to be told In Brazil. dawn again the streets are Those carnival - dəgə, you thronged with revellers

them dancing

TOTU une are

But no coup. Just practising for carnival Factory, workers, secretaries, labourers, grand mothers, tota, rich men, poor men, beggarmen, Plain week- day people. And all wiggling.

KNEES UP

there in the

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Thy

ing up on him.

But of all the carnivals, friende, in all the islands and the cities of where you would like to be this cold Saturday morning, there is none to com- paro Theo with the jiggle-de-l-do in

land of Haiti.

Haiti is one of the two Negro republics in the world and there is no difference between man and man at all, and at holiday time oven les so.

So there on the balcony of o public restaurant, in the main square of Port-au-Prince, is none other than the dusky President of Halli himself with all his Cabinet, and not a few bottles of whisky,

drawn up along the concrete balustrade.

THE

the

WITH JOY

most cacophonous national brass band in all West Indies plays at its uttermost through the heat of the day while half of the happy population dances with joy in a thousand different costumes.

The other half of the popula- tion, it often seems, is on the balcony with the President and his Cabinet.

On the evening of May 7 the lobbies were plunged into a crisis of immense proportions. The country was even more excited than the members of Parliament. The political sensation was the subject of discussion in every meeting place; in pubs and back parlours, in bars and boardrooms.

There were three important considerations that had to be taken into account in estimating the donger to the Government, The charge of deliberately deceiving the House,

1

*

sustained, is never forgiven, and must wreck a Ministry.

Soma of Lloyd George's

belleved colleagues

that there was a great dent of sub- sionet in the charges,

that the consequences of reverses in the field, and under those condition a serious political assault might

the Government down.

The Ministry was at

3 period suffering from

bring Gonne dispatched telegrams demanding the attendance of their supporters ort the day of the debata Thero much activity in was just as Opposition circies.

As the storm grew in violence, Lloyd George "displayed con

How a little bit of paper put on the fire left its mark our whole generation

on

HE whole nation is in a stormy and troubled con- dition. It is 1918. The crisis of the Western Front rushes across the horizon, Military reverses in France give axious cause for alarm, There are disputes about manpower and the responsibilities for disasters in the War.

Military leaders at the War Office and in France hand out statements to their newspaper friends to the effect that Lloyd George has deliberately withheld troops in Great Britain instead of reinforcing in France.

This

CHALLENGE

Broken

were

thus the seeds of the dis-

the Maurice Debate integration that BOOT

over- took the Liberal Party. Tho party was really broken on May when the division bells were ringing through the Palace siderable force and determination, of Westminster for the fateful Ha had gone over the matter vote. It has never since regained thoroughly with his colleagues political eminence. "The rever

Mr in the Cabinet; he believed that berations of the quarrel,"

the the Government had a complete Churchill has written of answer to its critics.

He was

cager to make a case in Parlia- days issue, "continue to thla

And now we

the como to particular irony that surrounds issue holding such vital for English consequences Liberalism

#

An

ment.

He felt confident ho could convince the House.

9,

therefore, Оты May resolute Prime Minister entered a tense and crowded House of Commons to

case present the for the Governmcat

Asquith opened the Debate on the Motion for a Select Com- His speech was sunve

milteo,

to

By LORD BEAVERBROOK

BELOW: Preliminary Skoton of Graham Sutherland'e Portrait

Spiral

Comnions on the attention. And as the Official In 1022, four years after the House of

compiled aper These Statistics ance Maurice famous

Sir subject of man-power. Debate

afterwards stated to justify L. G's statement Frederick wrote a letter to the figures were

Maurice to be the time. it were better perhaps Prime Minister. He was eager by General

to let sleeping dogs complete inaccurate. bring forward and highly polished, It cannot evidence of what he claimed to

I was in J. T. Davies' room a be held to have been free from be the facta.

few days after the statement, Asquith concluded: He said that the document and J.T. was sorting out red hold na brief of

any from the War Office relating to dispatch_boxes to be returned Sort or kind for military 0.5 the avaliable troops in France to the Departments, As was CO it seems that the upward distinguished from civilian and, on which Mr Lloyd George had his wont, he looked in them spiral of cause and effect, what

is called,

bel politicians based his answer was prepared

locking them up and moving from one event to in a hurry. He declared that a opinion."

out

the another and greater one, found mistake had been made and the Messengers. Pulling out its origin in a trivial event in a whole strength of the Army in W.O box, be found in it, to

-room secretary's

at 10, Italy was Included in

#uke.

THE

.I

Triumph

strength

of the

Armice in

them

to

If the amending, figures sont

the his great astonishment, a

THE most telling section

alf Military Operations) containing of France. With the addition of from the D.M.O. (Director of Downing Street.

these troops, Lloyd George's detence de- increase of the fighing

A Ight modifications and corrections of by Maurico's department in the the first figures they had sent, War Office had not been over- pended on General Maurice's in January 1918 as compared and by some mischance this looked by the Prime Minister's own figures,

with January 1917 was slows box had remained unopened. secretary Lloyd George would "The figures that I gave," Maurice afrined that this J.T. and I examined it in not have given maleading Lloyd George stated, were mistake was discovered shortly dismay, and then J.T. put it in Information to Parliament taken from the official records afterwards, and reported to the are, rematikding, "Only you of the War Office, for which I Philip Kerr, one

Lloyd and 1, Frances, know of the of sent before made the state. George's private secretaries. existence of this paper." ment. If they were incorrect. Therefore ho declared that General Maurice was as respon Lloyd George, on May 9, 1918, There is no doubt that this sible as anyone else. But they had used an accidentally incor. is what Maurice had in mind were not inaccurate....There rect return to endorse his case, when he accused L. G. of mis-

absolutely no doubt that this though he had in his pose thing was that the document been no exclusion of Asquithian

But the amazing

And maybe there would have a very considerable addition

was never fixed upon. to the manpower of the Army

Liberals “að the ..... General in France at the beginning of

was it that the matter was Election. The disruption of 1918 as compared with the man-

never clinched, and Maurice or the Liberal Party might have someone never actually

said: been power at the beginning of 1917."

postponed ained for the remained Prime Minister to dispose of the

wis

It now

another return showing the corrected figures,†

Hinge

statement.

How

Maurice would not have been able to make the charge which the newspapers published. ·

There would have been no Maurice Debate.

The figures supplied by us averted, were so and so"? They argued

charge concerning the veracity WHERE then was this docu- round and over the point, but meat that corroborated Dover did one of them put any

of Bonar Law's statement Da

from tho

taken

to be asked: THE receive.

Saved

evon

the extension of the British General Maurice's claim? It finger on it. I was walling for According to his critics, crities that the Army in France n

ino. He dealt with it swiftly, would have glvm substance to the matter to be raised, and his conduct is entirely is being starved of manpower. Not a yard, he pronounced, had his accusations against Lloyd for the question to b

student of history responsible for the disasters

Ietter challenges the been taken over by the British George, though not to the charge Why did L

may ponder, these thoughts of March when the Germans tatement made by the Prime Army

result of the against Borrar Law, It was these supplementary figures with humility, minated with a Minister in the House of Com- Versailles Council.

But the the Or did ho7 crashed

questone of "kurinn the hinge ... upon which

comedy. British through

mong on April 9, 1918, try

whole question hung. lines.

It tons never came, and I could Through the oversight of which

Lloyd

George

do It was a triumphant reply. It invalidated the detailed defence not voluntarily break faith with secretary,

Lloyd George's In the final clash, Sir clared that the

Army in was a complete vindication of Lloyd George had bulit up. J. T. perhaps put L. G. in a Government--for months the Frederick Maurice, a do. France was considerably Lloyd George and Bonar Law: But what became of 117

fx, and, who

knows have target of a military junta and No further attack was launched stronger in January 1918 then voted admirer and confidant in January of the year before.

1 now quote in full an extract brought down the Governmen' the butt of powerful and con- Opposition Front

tentious forces determined to of Sir William Robertson

Bench Such is the altuation when

from the Diary of The only explanation is that drag down and utterly destroy [Chief of the Imperial this book begins,

The House, dividing on the Countess Lloyd George, which Maurice and Co. were relying on the Prime Minister was saved motion for a Select Committee, included in the Lloyd George getting their Judicial Committee, and Indeed trengthened

It is dated, where every point would have im returned an astonishing total collection.

Immeasurably.

Never again, been, thrashed, put in detail, for the duration of the wat, was of 293 votes for the Govern. October 5, 1934.

When the Judicial Commities Lloyd George in danger from ment. Ono hundred and six

Have been reading up the was turned down, it was by the assaults of enemies of the with the Opposition. members registered their votes events connected with the that time too late to bring up right and loft. The direction Maurice Dobate in order to details again, and by that time of the war remained, ukalberod help LLC. with this Chapter also Maurice was beaten In Volimo of the

unesty Memoirs, and am

I suppose it is too late now -mind about an incident for the matter to be cleared [up of the which occurred at the time and But I will talk it over with silent "and, and 1 had better keep" importance Maurice Debate na an which incident nolia alstory Davis is down only to T. But win a fer he w cannot be forgotten. In the obtained from the W.O. the could come of any revelatio

place, it marked a turning

which he uses in h made now, but Lea

"umizin point in Lord, Grong's carbon statement on April 9 in the thing to me stil that in It left him in position

bol, theen years no one has fazioned

this partiotalar-poltik“. confiderable authority

(1/Br 2 *. Davies, Urwaheal the late eiigh! Julfumions in Colos Framiyaip "DE"Lloyd Georgiana Repinston's 1,book about Jáidte

S

THE

Strength

General Staff, and just "Men and Power transferred from Director of 1917-1918" published Military Operations to other by Hutchinsons at 258. employment becomes the standard-bearer of the + Lloyd George in his soldiers against the Govern- speech in Parliament on May 9, 1918, declared On May 7, 1918, a etter that Sir Frederick Mall- from Maurice is publiaved in rice had never made any accusing the Government of a correction of the state- series of misstatements, on the ment of Army strength in the strugglo

ment..

several morning. newspapers

military situation, ·He rep forces claims of Government in France"

ilme since he had

Liberal Party was doe

Thidi while teñeniles ・ we

scattered far and wide, af

Behold, hoto great a fire-

a little matter Kindleffl

Next Week:

that