1939-04-15 — Page 11

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SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1939.

You Can't See It Coming

-By-

Will Scott

EING people, we make plans. On the whole, they are plans for the future. We are better at making plans for next Saturday than we are at making plans for next Monday.

This little trick of making plans is.

Some day ho may be a

I think, the chief difference between men and dogs. Dogs scratch up a bone and go to sleep in the sun, They worry about to-morrow's bone to-morrow. Men worry about to-morrow's bone to-day. This is called using your intelligence." Dogs aren't supposed to have any intelligence. They just go to sleep In the sun and let men get on with the worry.

Being men, we do.

F we are now scraping up money with which to buy to-day's bone, we take les-

sons in something or iry to think up some tuke whereby we can have more money next year and buy a bigger and better bone. We make plans about it.

If we are born in a back street we muke up our minds to get out and up. We decide that by the time we are forty we will be living in a beautiful suburb, within nice big house and a car. We make plans about that.

Men are always looking ahead, making plans, preparing for that which is coming along.

And then (nasty trick!) come- thing else comes along.

We don't see it coming. I think, because we're always looking ahead. And it, whatever it may be, Is always coming along behind. Which sounds silly, possibly, but It's true.

Brown made dog-carts away back in 1000. It was a good line, and it had been in the family for years. He had a vila at Putney and £25,000 in the bank.

Brown decided that his con should do better than he himself had done. He made plans. He had the boy properly trained to use his He extended the Intelligence.

works. He got ready. To-day, the boy, grown up, is head of the busl- ness. And bankrupt.

Who wants dog-carts now?

S

OMETIMES, perhaps, young Brown moans about 1t. No doubt he says something like: "It only father. away back in 1900, had been ablo to look ahead to 1930 and see what was coming. I shouldn't be in the hole I'm in to-day."

But father, being an intelligent being (not like dogs), did have a shot at looking ahead to 1930 away back in 1000. The mistake he made was in not looking behind him.

-To-day's Thought IGNORANCE of future tits is more useful than knowledge

-CICERO, of them.

diciator !

which will probably break out about 1000, will be wished on to all kinds of reasons when it starts. A minority problem in Europe Minor or a racial problem in the Never-

back in 1004. That was when the Never Islands. first car ran in Paris,

Bow Bells have got most of the credit for Dick Whittington's luck. But he heard the bells because he sat on the milestone at the foot of Highgate H.

No milestone, no sit. On ho might have gone over the hill to Finchley and never heard the bells at all; finished up an insolvent grocer in Bedford or wherever he came from.

Who put the milestone there? Nobody knows. But whoover ho was he sent Mr. Whittington to three Guildhall banquets and caused him to make a fortung out -of rats.

Idle Jack and Barah. tho Cook shouldn't have left it at that when they put the stolen money in Dick's purso. They ought to have taken a walk out to Highgate and pulled up the milestone. It was there. waiting to turn Dick's story into a fairy tale, years before he was born.

All the time he was looking ahead his future was in the past,

at

of

E think that because something, we plan to do to-morrow, morning eleven o'clock we shall be rich or famous or happy or some thing else three years hence.

We don't realise that we may be one, some, all or none of these things because of something that somebody else did in Bradford or Brisbane or somewhere as long ago as Bank Holiday, 1007.

That Crisis. Everybody will tell you that it began in 1918, that it has arisen out of what happened in 1918. But I'm one of those people who believe that the stars make the show. If you haven't got the stars the show won't have much of a run,

It's all very well saying that if wo could have looked forward twenty years and seen what was coming in 1938 we'd have done a lot of things we didn't do in 1818 and everything in the garden would be lovely now.

I doubt it.

A

8 I see things the Crisis didn't begin in 1918 at all. It began in 1889. In that year was born a baby boy who was given the name of 1918 made Hitlerism Adolf. possible." you'll hear. But surely It's the Hitlers who make Hitlerism possible.

The Big Mess After the Next One,

Girls and Boys' Corner

Bomething left over from 1000. But the real reason why it will flare up into a first-rate show set for a long run will be the love of his own voice, the admiration for his own face, or the big sense of his own Importance of some Inter- national Nuisance No. 1 who, at this very moment, is heaving his bottle out of his cot and trying to get his darling little too into his pitty ickle mouth.

I spen

THE trouble is, you can't spot him now. in 1938. the tree comes down and smashes the house to bits we curse. "If only we could have seen it coming." Yes, but who notlees an acorn?

No doubt Napoleon, the first Da-da," was the time he sald

could sweet cutest little

you Imagine. It's all very well to say, years afterwards: "If only some-- body had mixed weedkiller with his rusks." You can't tell a Napoleon at the time his first tooth comes through,

When the Big Mess After the Next One does get going in 1980 Bomebody is certain to, say, "If only we had seen this coming in the world 1080. How different would be now."

Not a bit of it. Now, 1038, not 1900, is the time to see what's coming in 1080,

WONDER where he is? Snake

Bend? Block- holm? Budleigh Salter- ton? Botnay Buy? I wonder what his name is? He's probably about two-and Just like his daddy. don't you think?

Holl-bo. going to school.in an- other three years or so to learn to use his intelligence, like the dogs don't.

And he may, after all, not be that kind of boy. He may grow up into a cultivator of the World's Largest Dahlla, or discover a pro- cess for making electricity out of cabbage water so cheaply that we can all have a lot of it for no- thing.

There may be no Big Meas Alter the Next One in 1980. Everything in the garden may be lovely by then.

It depends such a lot on Blue Eyes in his ittle crib somewhere --wherever that somewhere is. Bless his darling little heart. Or otherwise.

The colouring competition was very

well received. I think that most of you would prefer colouring competitions all the tune. Dozens and dozens of entries were received and I had quite a task picking out the winning entries.

However, I have decided to award the Jean Girady (aged 117, China Iight and

prizes this week to

L'ower Co.

Lore Korner (aged 8%), 5, 11axiloa. Pauline Neubronner (aged 74), 13, Câmerah Road.

Coupons have been sent to Jean, Lort and Pauline which I want them to bring to the "Hongkong_Telegraph" ofices in Wyndham Street. The coupons will then be exchanged for money prizes.

Specially commended for excellent work ard the following:

This is all my own work

Address

Name

Ago

el-

Benior: Charles E Clark, Teeny aon, Ho Shuk-chun, Paul Vessons, Ex Geall, N. Hellevick, Francis Ribeiro, D. 10 Julebin Mary G Asche,

Becker Kit-wa, Eva Grady, Mary An

Mansoor All,

Intermediates: Lela Coriulano, Joan Daniel, B. B. Bux. C. Ross.

Juniors: Evelyn Buter. Patricia Wood, June Gordan. Ceelle Lim, Francis Daniel, Teresa Tozario, Dorothy Coates, Susan Wood, David B. Asche, Anthony Cutcher P. Wong. Halba Moosden, Gabriel Ar nulphy, Shona Mcintyre.

Lore Korner: Thank you very match for your letter, poem and suggestion for a competition,

Mansoor All: Thank you very much for your Earler greeting.

This week, kiddies, we are going 10 have another colouring competition. With your prints or crayons, colour the above picture as gaily as you can. Fill in the name, age and address coupons and send your entries to Uncle Addis c/o *ITORK-

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH WEEK-END SECTION

BOOKS.

Miner's

great novel

ELE

ALEVEN years ago at a de- monstration in Trafalgar square someone sold me a paper- covered book of poems for a shilling. The poet was a young Scottish miner named Joe Corrie, and his verses sang with irony and bitterness of the muck and drudgery of the pit.

Now, Joe Corrie, has written a novel which repeats the theme of his verses. Black Earth (Routledge, 78, Bd.) pictures quite simply and quite horrifyingly the grim and inexorable tyranny, of the Pit over the dwellers In a little mining town.

It brings them pit-conditioned hovels, pit-controlled babies, plt- truncated education, pit-fixed prices in the shops, pli-caused illness and death.

Mr. Corrie, you see, hus wrliten a Social Document but, fortunately, he is a sentimentalist at heart, and so his story continually struggles from the straight und rigid path of the doctrinaire, and becomes human and entertaining.

So, although this book, solves no problems, it is a moving picture of real human beings working and striking, being heroes or blacklegs, gossiping. curving, betting. being generous and being mean. They are neither all good nor all bad, but like the rest of us (and this is what makes the social, reformer's job so hurd), just moral leopards, good and bad in spots.

MIS

*

*

ISS 1. A. R. WYLIE shifts the scene from coal-digging to gold- digging. The Young in klart (Cas-

A Winter Chronicle, by E. G. Kol- benheyer. Translated from the German by H. A. Phillips and K.-W. Maurer. London: The Bod- ley Head. 7s. 6d. net.

TERE is a rather unusual novel.

supposed,

Pousewang, who, one winter in the course of the Thirty Years War, while the Swedes and Saxons ard fighting with the Imperial troops outside the walls of Breslau, sets down this account of his life for the benefit of his son.

Pausewang is of a mystical, in- trospective, and poetic turn of mind, much under the Influence of Jakob

Bohme, the German mystic and philosopher, who is introduced as character in the book, he and Pause- wang coming together for a short space while they are both boys. At the Blume time there is a simple, practical side to Pausewang's nature, and this combines with the other to dictate the form of his reminiscences, which consist of plain, straight- forward narrative, interspersed with long reflections in parentheses that seek to illumine his inner conscious- ness, and to assess his experiences by the light of a pecullar, personal, and other worldly vision.

There is a moving quality in these outpourings, whose essence is poetry rather than a reasoned philosophy, dnding its expression in an exalted, transcendental outlook; but, on the whole, it is the narrative that makes the deeper impression. It is simple enough, but excellently fold. The characters included in it are, almost all. something more than types, revealing in their inward condicts, and in their behaviour, a convincing- ly human complexity.

tho

One does not easily forget nero's father, that ferce, imaginative, uliappy, hard-drinking, Quixotic swashbuckler who kept the inn of the Wolf's Paws, and might have come out of

Rabelais; nor Father Christoffel, who missed his vocation when he chose the Black instead of Master Wutke, who the Red; nor mixed alchemy with shoemaking to la undoing: nor, lastly, the young Bohme. In addition, the background of country and town life in sixteenth- erntury Germany, more especially that part concerned with the rule of the guilds-is-very-well-suggested.

A special word of praise should also go to the two translators, whose version reaches a high standard of literary merit,

The Book Window

Heyday in a Vanished World, by Stephen Bonsal (Norton. $3.50). At the age of 23. Mr. Bonsal was advising statesmen in the Balkans only one of his exploits as u James Gordon Bennett reporter. His-book reads like the pages of its faults but most of its virtues. Dithers and Jitters, by Cornella Otis Skinner (Dodd, Mead, $2). A talented writer actress reprints

published humorous

essays magazines in recent months.

and Photography

the American Sceno, by Robert Taft (Macmillan, $10). A discussion of the parallel- ism of camera work and social history, 1830-1889.

In

kong Telegraph," Wyndham Street. The competition closes af 2 pm, on Wednes- day.

Three prizes will again be given-ØRD for the best in each section.

Every good with

Uncle Eddie

sell, 8s. 3d.) is one of a volume of short stories. It has the sentimental zalety of a Capra im and tells spenkingly how a family of profes- sional parasites sets out to sponge on a lonely old lady in a large London house. But a miracle of delayed Spring takes place and good deeds come to town. Perhaps. however, you have already seen it franslated Into a most amusing film...

Another of Miss Wylle's stories, "Witches' Sabbath," is an all-too- credible piece of horror about a little Jewish boy In a. Nazi-controlled

school.

*

*

Union History MR.

VR.G. D. H. COLE noted thật no comprehensive account of the British Trade Union Movement had been published since the Webbs issued theirs in 1894 and 1897, so he gives us British Trade Unionism To- day (Gollancz, 78, Od.);

The uniformed reader should be warned against accepting as gospel all that Mr. Cole writes.

For example, he gets into a muddle

when dealing with unofficial sirikes which are not necessarily a breach of an agreement (as he assumes), but a breach of rules of the strikers'

own union.

Nor is his history complete, He has forgotten that die Mond-Turner conference (Page 70) was followed by a more formal organisation.

Still, with such reservations, Mr. Colo. has provided a background for valuable thumbnail histories by trade union officers who have been in- timately associated with what they write about.

G. T.

MYSTERY

is always pleasant-and un- fortunately rore-lo discover a

BUT the book of die week for me D has been Richard Oke's Strange Island Story (Arthur Burker, 78. Gd.), which is all about n revolution in o semi-tropical British island, a small-good new detective story writer. scale Trinidad or Jnuicu.

It is enormously funny, very excit- ing, and tremendously well written, streaked with poetry and lightly borne learning. The action is spread over a few days and the manner of telling the story-in recurring sec- tions each from the point of view of particular character-vividly adds to the onrush and inter-play of events.

And how preposterously, merciless- ly real the characters are, the re- sident ruling classes and the ruled, both stewing in heat and superstillon (nalive and imperial varieties).

The author mirrors their externals with the wit of Evelyn Waugh down to the last click of the dental plate. the last unspoken thought, the final idiosyncrasy too absurd imagined, and he burrows into their minds with the tronic persistence of E. M. Forster.

to

be

"It is remarkable with how little wisdom the world is governed." Sir Albany Pontoon, Governor of the Island, quotes to himself in his bath at the outset of this book. It is the toptent and significant theme of a brilliant novel.

Stuart Fletcher

There is one this week, J. Russell Warren, who does so well with Murder from Three Angies (Heine- mann, 78. 04.) that he must be pul nene the top class.

It is a tale of the fate of a black- maller, told superbly by the not very easy method of employing three nar- rators.

You may anticipate the climax, but that won't spoil your pleasure one jot. Look out for more from Mr. Warren.

Read David Winser's Time to Kill (Longmans, 7s. 6d) for some nicely acid writing and acute touches of observation rather than for anything new on its subject, euthanasia or mercy murder, and you will not be 'disappointed.

atc. Byde (Chapman and Hall, 78. ed.), by Hugh Arnoll, is one of the few thrillers I feel called on to men- tion, not because of anything new in ita hwarting-a-Dictator plot, but be cause of a freshness in its treatment and a pleasing literary in its writing.

P. E. H.

*

UNA Struggles for Unlly, by

the

J. M. D. Pringle (Penguin, @d.). It hardly seems possible that whole setting of the Chinese war con be given in 150 brightly written pages. Yet that is what this book does. There are 24 fascinating maps by Marthe Rajchman.

•SNAPSHOT CUILD

The SNAI

VIEWPOINT IN LANDSCAPES

The house in the lower right nicely balances the composition and accentuates the height of the mountains.

Now that nature bas once more But he who takes palus to locate a been adorned with the verdurevlowpoint which gives in his finder of spring and a new season of out- a well-balanced arrangement of the door plcture taking has begun, it is objects In the sceno gonoraily gets appropriate to consider landscape pictures that are not merely photo-

graphically clear but artistic. pictures.

Are you willing to climb a fence, Good landscape subjects are, at feast, easy to find. One can travoltoi! up a rugged bill, wado a brook,

to got that vlowpolni? Many an on- · scarcely_anywhero_without_ençóan. tering pleasing vistas of woods and thusiast has taken-roat risks. for a Remember that the vlowpolat Belds, bills and valleys, stream and viewpolat and beon amply rewarded. Jake, country cottages, old farm-should be such that the pictura houses, tree-canepled roads, Locks balancea both vortically and horl- of browsing sheep, herds of cattle. zontally, Generally there should bo and all that makes for beauty and a large mass, the mala object of in- forest, near but not at the center, interest in landscapes.

What should we do to capturo balanced by several smaller objects these lovely scene with our cam-or masses on the other side, or by a eras? Such views may soom easy to fainglo smaller one farther from the take as they meet the eye, but here, center, or in some cases slightly ns in all photography, indiscriminato jabore or below the center,

Take time to move around from snapshooting asusily results in jam- blad composition. A little thought, a spot to spot and in each place ex little planning, a little effort, if you soriment with the scono as it ap please, to make the picture-Dot pears in your viewfinder. Be aalis meroly to take it. This means caro fled that you have this balanced in selecting a viawpoint which composition before you let the pic makes the composition essential to ture lato your lens. Choosing the an artistic picturo, You cannot shoot bosi viowpoint le what the landscape painter does before ho sote up his on aight and be lucky avery time.

Beginners are often satisfied with canal to make his picture. Remember any picture at all as long as it is that In the same way you, too, with

¡a camera, can make a picture. clear. They are delighted merely to have obtained the correct exposuro. I

Dog Falls 80 Feet

Sanducky, O.

John van Guilder

"WITNESS" TREES

MT. CARMEL, JI! Two "witness" trees, established as Cal, a small bulldog, plunged from landmarks more than a century age. the roof of a building a distance of by government surveyors during the 00 feet and lived to bark about it surveying of a wilderness which later The dog coughed a few times, inhaled was to become the Northwest Terri- a few deep, breathe, and was as good tory, are still standing in Wabash

county. Las over..

|

H

Old Man Nevinson

TERE is Henry Nevinson, with dreams to sell. In Films of Time (Routledge, 10s. 6d. net) he “rolla' back the reel of the past, conjures up magic shadow-shaper, and iden- tiles his second self, or his many selves, with characters of dim-tradi- tion. Biblical and classical history. and modern events in tragle Europe,

Follower of war and reporter-of- stark facts, he reveals himself in these "twelva fantasies" as follower of the Muses and fairy-tale translator of history, envisaging events from the celebration of the "rites" of Kings of Ur to happenings in what was once Austria, and meditations in sight of "the desolate widow of. chiles."

Finally, dipping into the future,: we find old Methuselah Nevinson in the dock, pleading before his judges for another century of life caring because he is not yet worthy of either hell or heaven of hell bo- cause he has not yet betrayed his friends or his country, of heaven because he has not yet suffered In efforts to depose martyrdom tyranta who grind and beaden the bodies and souls of people and no- tions,

These are essay's of educational value, yet light and restful; 227 pages in which a fervent champion of free- duny exposes snapshots of his own studies. holiday adventures and aspirations.

T. F.

Are You Sure?

QUESTIONS ÅRE ON PAGE TWO.

1. Ophella. 2. (n) Zululand; (b) Australia;| (c) Canada and U.S.A. (Red In- |dians); (d) India,

3. (a) "Mrs. Warren's Profes- slon"; (b) "Vortex"; (c) "Lady Windermere's. Fan"; (d) "Time and the Conways" (c) "Bill of Divorcement" (1) "Night Must Fall."

4. Westmorland, Sutherland. 5. Mountain (in the Himalayas).) 6. Yes. All of them.

7. All save the Faroes. 8. Port Mahon.

9. Compel men to serve in tie Navy.

19. (a) USA. (Alaska); (b) Eire (Donegal).

Mounted 11. Royal

Police.

Canadian

12. Part of Old Testament, all; New Testament,

13. (a) A dollar; (b) twenty- five pounds; (e) five hundred pounds; (d) one pound; (e) ten cents; (f) sixpence.

14. (a) Napoleon L.; (b) Charles L; (e) Prince Charles Edward Stuart; (d) Chevalier Bayard,

15. (a) Ulater; (b) Leinster; (c) Munzler; (d) Munster.

10, Seven.

17, (n) Peru: (b) Mexico; (c) Japan; (d) New Zealand; (0) U.S.A. (1) South Africa.

18. (a) Prejudice; (b) Sen- sibility; (c) Abbey; (d) Park.

19. Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp; Sinbad the Sailor; All Baba and the Forty Thieves."

20. (a) Household Cavalry; (b) Royal Scots; (c) Yorkshire Regi- ment; (d) Essex Regiment; (6)} East Kent Regiment.

21. Caucasiars (725 million).

22. Intellectual darkness. 23. Arctic.

24. Jewish measure.

25. Together. Hind pair hook on to front

26. Jew of Spanish origin. 27. Five years.

PUZZLE CORNER ANSWERS

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Letter Changing!,, Woods, reeds, reads, beads, brade, brass, graze,

What Is the Difference?: 1 3-7 per cent.

Clasic Prose! Adam Bede-George Eliol: Jane Eyre-Bronie: The Now- comes-Thackeray; Emma-Austen; The Tallman-Scott; The Brothers Karamazov-Dostoievski: Anna Kare- rina Tolstol The, Scarlet Letter Hawthorne: The Return of the Nativa -Hardy: The Old Wives' Tale-Ban. nett.

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