1939-02-03 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TE LEGRAFII, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1939.

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fresh

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SUPERB RECORDINGS OF FAMOUS COMPOSERS

DEKTROVEN

BRAHMS

Bymphony No. 1 in G Major..... With "Toseunial" and the

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Symphony No. 4 in E Minor ........With "Bruno Waller" and the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra (Album-No. 210)

DVORAK

Symphony No. 4 in G Major ......

HAYDN

With Fulich" and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (Album-No. 248)

Symphony "Military" No. 169 in G Major. With "Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

SCHUBERT

Symphony "The Great" In C Malor .With "Bruno Waiter" and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Album--No, 316) TCHAIKOWSKY

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Symphony No. 6 in B Minor

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to

HONGKONG HOTEL

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Stubbs Road. . .Phone: 27778-9.

DEATH

ROBERTSON--At the Kowloon Hos- pital, on 3rd February, 1939, Captain Thomas Balfour Robert- son, aged 55 years, late of S.S. "Kainpol." Funeral will pass Stubba Road Gate nt 5.30 p.m. this afternoon.

The

Hongkong Telegraph.

Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 February 3, 1939

A Real AxÏS

THE MOMENTOUS news that President Roosevelt has pledged American support to democracy in the case of a war with the Totalitarian countries should have sobering in- fluence upon those who favour the use of force in interfational affairs.

3

It is quite understandable that America should announce her policy, for as a great de- mocracy, she naturally feels it her duty to do all in her power to assist other democratic coun- tries which may be threatered.

The freedom of the subject is the very corner-stone of de- mocratic principles, and any movement which threatens to challenge that freedom must be vigorously opposed.

The wave of nationalist. which has swept through Ger- many and Italy has created a danger which cannot be uver. Nationalism in itself is looked an admirable quality, but when it becomes so revolutionary in nature as to constitute a men- ace to others, the others mas

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If Germany considers that'

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main threat to democracy, che has only herself, to blame. The,

1. public utterances made by her masters have had anything but a soothing effect on the rest of the world, and it naturally follows that when danger is supposed to exist, it is only logical and sensible that those! likely to be affected should or ganise united action for resia- tance.

nome

The United States will do everything possible to keep out of war, and rightly so. Ainezi- can Statesmen have followed | events in Europe with apprehension, and there can be no doubt that from the Presi- dent downwards, they are fully aware of the policies which ara at the root of the trouble in Europe to-day.

MAN-

or Men?

BY WILL SCOTT

N all the muddle of to-day few people seem to be quite clear as to where mankind *is supposed to ba hegding, although plenty will tell you that mankind is heading, and pretty rapidly. It would be a bit easier if we knew what man- kind Is for. Then wo might know if it's heading right or wrong.

It's easy with sheep and such. A slicep is meant to be a sheep- mutton, and overcoats. When

sheep has become a good fat sheep It's got as far as it can go. It never tries to be anything more than a good fat sheep.

A racehorse is meant to be n racehorse and nothing but. When It has won the Derby It's done all you can expect of It, But with men you never know. They go off in all directions,

One will suddenly get up

one morning and design St. Paul's Cathedral, Another will discover the South Pole. A third will add up another man's figures and get bread and butter for doing it. A fourth will dive Into the Berpen- tine every day, summer and win- ter.

Some, even, sit in barrels and let people peep at them for a penny. It's a pity more don't. I won't mention any names. In the old days the idea was to be differ. ent. You developed yourself. or tried to. If your neighbour did one thing you did another. That was the rest of the whole

Old School

Ties..

VERY six months or so I have the same night- mare. I dream I am back at school.

"I wake up in the morning in a cold sweat to find comparative paradise in a world that demands no more of me than that I should pay my Income-tax,

I was by no means miserable at school. I was a damn nuisance to everybody, but I had lot of fun.

One thing is certain, however: I that my school days were The have never pretended to anyone

Happiest Days of My Life.

What bad psychology that tag is, anyway, suggesting to children that they will never be happler than when they are struggling with cube roots and irregular verbs.

*

* *

Last week I was invited by the Old, Boys' Society of my school as guest at their annual dinner, I accepted will- ingly. With the exception of my com- panion-who drove down to Cambridge with me I had seen few of my school- fellows during the past eleven years.

It might have been a grim and dreary experience. It turned out to be enjoyable, amusing and lightly bizarre. To begin with, I suddenly found myself back among people who, in splic of the "Daily Herald" and the radio. ti thought of me as "Patrick" in- tend of "Spike,"

Tha very mention of radio gavo mu ia

shock anyway. When I had last seen these young men who were at dinger. the Wireless had meant nothing more than the Morse code.

Yet here they were. fifteen years

after, talking ably about "Monday at Ogilvie.

Seven and asking me if I'd met Mr.

The oddest moments of all were the

first moments of reusion. Faces seemed vaguely faindiar: a name would be mentioned and after that it was epay.

* *

There was young Reggle. He is youngar than I and even Llaner on top; be was smoking a cigarette, speak- ing in a deep bass voice. It was dim- cult to ronismber him as my right centre when I had played on the wing and wa unɑ knocked hell out of a boy

who tates got a cap for Wales.

A Bearly, mulitary-looking fellow came up to me. He has a fült mous- tache now and is is, the Territoriala, He reminded me of his name. But all I could remember on hearing it was the pleture of a very small child indeed winning cups for diving against all comera

by Spike Hughes

question brought strange with it

ANAWCIE

John, for instance, He is a stock broker; he went into the job before he realised how deadly it could be. Now ho can't get out. But in hila apare time he runs a hostel in Bloomsbury for young down and outs.

Alfred is a Dom. He leads a secluded His with his wine and bis Greek epigrams Francis works at television, which he reached by way of Hollywood, 4 repertory company in Santa Bárbara, Cal., and bullding a French clintenu for a millionaire in Reno,

I liked is some of the answers I got to the inevitable, "What's hap pened to

}

One child I remembered had been killed Bghting with the International Brigade in Spain, another had been killed mi a car smash in Aden; yet another had shot himself in Gibraltar -he was a handsome, charming boy too, who surely needn't have worried over a love affair.

There were other tragedica as well, some noble, some oddly sordid.

As the evening went on there was a strange melancholy about most of Lis. No sighing for Good Old Days, but the stark realisation that the school, which was founded in 1015, had somehow served its purpose.

*

*

*

We began to realise that if they had not been The Happiest Days of our Life, at least our schooldays had been more intelligently

supervised than

most.

Our headmaster. The languages master, the English master had brought to education not only what is called the Direct Methad of teaching elasales and languages, but somethiny Immensely personal which had made our school unique.

Oh yes we produced our. Blues and our Rugger internationals, but above all we produced boys who were good democrats, who loved the English lan- guage, to whom the plays of Shates- peare. Euripides and Molière were J1V- ing experiences to whom being ru ented was the English have the only word for.kti Pun.

We were melancholy because, from all accounts, none of this tradition has remained. Three great educationista have retired: "the Old Man" to hậ farm, the languages master to his bowin ́at Grantchester, the English master to his memories of our enjoying Shaker- peare in a theatre instead of realting him in a classroom.

system. You "didn't want to be like old Brown,"

Nowadays, if your neighbour does one thing, so do you. You don't like to be different. You don't like to be thought different. "It won't done."

I'm prepared to be proved wrong. but I believe that if the human race had always been as shy as it Is to-day of the things that “ aren't dong" the Arst pages of all the history books would still be blank paper. Better for that? Maybe you're right.

HOWEVER, Away in the dim past Individ- Hallam used to be en- couraged. If a man stood on his head in pond nobody tried to steal his thunder. They gave him the credit. They told their children and their children's children, generation after genera- tion, about the Man Who Stood on his Head in the Pond. He became a legend.

To-day if a man stood on his head in a pond you'd have half the Western Hemisphere at it by to-morrow morning.

Coming in,

old man? But you must. Every- body's doing it."

Crowds of them. All standing on their heads in ponds. Not a bad idea elther, perhaps, if you give it careful thought.

Discovering America was a job for one man four hundred years ago. Discovering places like Frin- ton is a job for half Mayfair now. A one-man diɛcovery would be a wash-out. A one-man anything.

"Everybody's doing it... That's

the modern idea.

The old system turned out people like Shakespeare and Henry the Eighth and Whistler and. Our Fawkes and Hall Caine and Abra- ham Lincoln and Napoleon and Queen Elizabeth and Charles Penco and Dr. Johnson. Good, bad and the other sort, but definitely them- selves,

The new system, as I see it, is out to put a stop to all that. I don't know if it knows it, but that is all the present system is for.

Behind the clashing ideas and the clashing nations of this age, behind all the strife and the dozens of -isms. 1 firmly believe thero is that one fundamental

thing carrying all the other troubles on its back: the question, is the human race to become in the end Men, different, Individunis, like men on a choss-board, or fan, a mass, uniform, one like the rest. like men on a draught-board? I do firmly believe that that in down underneath mast of the up-

Henry

Shakespeare, VIII, Cromwell, Lloyd Gcorge de Anitely themselves,

heaval of our time. Are we to be- come, in the end, a herd, like thin sheep? Or not?

Already wo are well on the way. Millions wearing the same coloured- shirts, raising our 'right arms. shouting the same shouts.

Or, even when we're not forced to do so. wearing the same sort of hata, because the man next door docs." Everybody's doing it..."

Man or Men? Perhaps the world is making up its mind. But, as i aald in the first place. I can't make.

mine.

I know which side I'm #p on. I may be on the wrong side. I can't tell. Time will.

I

I'm quite aware of some of the drawbacks of “Individualism.

means the best man know that it wins, and when you have a man who wins, you've got to have a man. who loses, and losing isn't so nice. I'm quite aware of some of the ad- vantages of the herd,

Perhaps when we're all alike, with no differences at all, we'll find. wo've got nothing to quarrel about. Just turning us all into sheep may bring peace to earth at last. Sheep have a pretty peaceful time, I notice.

Men don't. Well, they haven't had so far.

And perhaps that's what men are meant to be in the end: all alike. It won't be in my time or yours, but it may be in somebody's.

FOR conturies and cen- turies we've been im- pelled by individual- ism. Little groups, littlo sects, families. pairs, persons, separate ideas, lonely adven tures, individual achievements. It may have been all wrong. For the life of me I cannot honestly say. Perhaps the ultimate herd is what mankind is for.

All Smiths, Or Browns. Robinsona,

Or

There's one thing that strikes me. Even in the countries where the herd idea is strongest there are just one or two who refuse to join the herd. They have a high old time running the nerd. They are the individuals who have killed In- dividualism. Except their own.. A crafty notion.

A world full of sheep in a meadow called the world. It's an Idea. But I wonder if it's interest- Ing being sheep.

Tako representative half- dozen men from the age that was. Alfred the Great, Thomas à Backet, William Shakespeare. Oliver Crom- well,. Charles the Second. Lloyd George.

Take a representative half-dozen men from the age that may be. Smith. Smith, Smith. Smith, Omith. Smith.

I wonder.

GRIN AND BEAR IT

[12–13

By Lichty

"I suppose you's rathe! I'd let at truck-driver. intimidate mal" SHOT EMBARRASSES

HUNTER

NILES, O.

SHARKS ATTACK

WHALE DURBAN, 364th Africa:

At the moment, the American support_must have tremendous

I was asked to make a speech, but moral effect, for by aligning the

When i was there we had United States with Great Britin

It went on like this for a long time. I refused `A name, a'lace atid they produced this Serbians, Frenchmen. Balgians. In- and Franco, the rest of the world ·atrangest assoulations; the angle of a ... diana, Burmesà, Chineza, Japanem, la-told in no uncertain manner school, cap, the shape of ablegale, a Americana. Jews from Byria and Spain, younger brother who'd put his ride - two boys frattodivostock and bar that the greatest combination through my drum une Pleid Day from Blam.STREAM

A hunter shot at a rabbit, he saw White playing on the beach pear, of power "ever known is to ho could so nobidy compositeurs I had spoke, I would have said puering over the edge of a pile of hed school children saw a battle bact marshalled as the force to character hus onyana protider of that in that mahout of cars, thigh we Foxes and rushed to pick up his game tween a hure whale and loeveral sharks only 100 yards from the shore. Incidents which fot-Bothe, relied had were only entldred, we were bound by He found only, a rabbly's guide the hot headed to the sisypf in my memory SATIN STEP nreiz matemul Riber testosensiss, which lokost

frlenda had placod on áttacked: from "all sites, the s what path of universal Pasco,ERE Wins Kew you doing hôn hãy